


I settled in slowly to this house that you call home

by brynnmck



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Banter, Best Friends, Bets & Wagers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Porn with Feelings, brojobs, extremely gratuitous baseball references, face-sitting february, it's cool we're just friends...unless???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brynnmck/pseuds/brynnmck
Summary: He shrugs. "My honor has been maligned, I have to--""Your honor is in your dick?""Oh, it's not just my dick," he tells her, his grin going wicked. "It's also my hands, my tongue, my--""Stop." She waves her hands in front of her, trying to ward off the images that are suddenly flickering through her brain like a pornographic slideshow.He crosses his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge in a way that she's positive is intentional. "All I'm saying is that I bet I could get you screaming my name. And you obviously know I'm right, since you're too chicken to let me."Brienne grits her teeth. She is absolutely not going to fool around with her semi-drunk, rebounding best friend and roommate because he dared her to. She is not. She is--"Fine," she snaps. "Give it your best shot."Or, "Fucking Your Way To Feelings in Five Weeks or Less"ETA: Follow-up chapter added 5/2/2020
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 282
Kudos: 723
Collections: J/B Monthly Madness: February 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the amazing sameboots, the Queen of Brojobs (TM), for beta-ing this ridiculousness for me! ❤️❤️❤️ Any remaining errors and issues are, of course, purely my own. This also serves as my contribution to Face-Sitting February, the brainchild(/pantschild?) of the fantastic kirazi, and the gift that has kept on giving all month. Oh, and I stole the title from the Japandroids' "The House That Heaven Built."
> 
> Posting in two parts just for ease of readability. Really we're just talking 16K words of smut and feelings, here. Enjoy?

The Tarth Pirates' closer gives up a game-winning two-run home run, cementing their seventh loss in ten games. Brienne throws a napkin at the TV screen. "Oh, come _on_."

From the far side of the couch, Jaime whistles. "Man. That hurts."

"You know what?" Brienne turns the TV off with a disgusted stab of the remote, chugs the last half of her beer, and pops the top off another one. "They can't hurt me anymore. I've evolved beyond having feelings about baseball. People who have feelings about baseball are rubes, and I feel sorry for them."

Jaime's grin slants across his face. "Are you telling me you're finally ready to try a real sport?" he asks.

Brienne wrinkles her nose; she walked right into that one. They've been having the same argument since college, when senior star forward Jaime Lannister had walked by her, a lowly sophomore, taking her hacks in the batting cages, and asked her that exact same question. She'd pointed out that it wasn't a good idea to make that kind of comment to someone who had a bat in her hand, he'd asked her why she was using baseballs instead of softballs, she'd told him she was a better hitter than any guy on the varsity baseball team, he'd challenged her to prove it, and after a couple of buckets of balls and several contraband beers (mostly his), she'd somehow found herself promising to meet him at the gym the next morning.

For the first year or so, she'd kept waiting for him to get distracted and attach himself to someone else, but four years later, here he still is. Even more so, actually, given that after he'd quit his father's company and disinherited himself in a blaze of glory, she'd taken him in to the second bedroom of her moderately shitty apartment and promised to help him navigate life without an unlimited credit card. She's a little surprised at how nice it's been to have him around the past several months, except for the times she wants to kill him, and except for times like this, when he's _betraying_ her in her _hour of need_. 

"I'm telling you," she informs him loftily, "that my girls' team is gonna be able to kick all those guys' asses." She waves her beer bottle in the general direction of the screen.

His grin goes almost unbearably fond and proud. "Well, you know there's no doubt in my mind about that." 

A little glow kindles in her stomach, the kind she always gets when he offers her that unquestioning faith. She tips her head against the back of the couch, staring up at the water spot in the corner of the ceiling. She's got people--even the professors in her Sports Leadership Masters program--telling her every day that her dream of managing a professional women's baseball team is unrealistic and a waste of her time and talent. Having a roommate who not only believes she's going to do it, but believes she's going to be incredibly successful at it, has been helpful, to say the least.

"I just hope that when you're rich and famous, you'll still have time for a lowly bartender," he goes on, and she rolls her head to the side with a frown. Mostly, he's adjusted to his new world of second-hand furniture and having an actual budget, and the picture she'd framed of his first independent paycheck is still in his room to this day. But sometimes he gets that self-mocking twist to his mouth and she can almost hear his father's voice echoing in his mind, and she wants to go find Tywin Lannister and pummel his ruthless, toxic ass until he apologizes for all his years of messing with Jaime's head.

"Hey," she says instead, reaching out to nudge Jaime's shin with her toe. "You're a fucking awesome bartender, and I admire you way more for doing that than I would if you were making seven figures doing your dad's dirty work. Dirtier work, I guess," she amends, since Tywin is pretty dirty all on his own.

Jaime blinks at her; she could swear she actually sees his cheeks redden. "Aww, Tarth. My hero," he says, still with that ironic edge to it, but he utterly fails to hide his pleased smile in a gulp of his beer.

Watching him, a wave of affection and contentment rolls over her. She hasn't seen as much of him over the past several weeks, thanks to his intense dedication to having as much sex as possible with his beautiful girlfriend. But he and Taena had broken up a week ago, and tonight he's got a rare night off, and practice for the softball team she's coaching to help pay the bills had been called due to weather, so here they are, with nothing to do but bullshit and drink beer while the rain spatters the windows behind them. 

"I missed this," she tells him on impulse, then quickly adds, "Not to guilt-trip you or anything, it's just nice to have…" She waves a hand between them. "This." 

Jaime holds out his beer bottle. "To this."

"To this," she agrees, and clinks her bottle against his. After another drink, she's feeling cheerful and reckless enough to go on, "And I have to admit, though I'm sorry it didn't work out with you and Taena, I _won't_ miss having to listen to your sexcapades."

Jaime barely avoids spitting his beer all over the coffee table. "My _what_?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She makes her tone high and breathy. "'Oh, Jaime! Oh! I've never felt like this! Jaime, you're a sex god!" Which is, unfortunately for Brienne, a direct quote. 

Something flickers across his face, quickly smothered by a smug grin, and he lounges back on the couch in a way that's frankly annoying. _Insouciance_ , is what it is. Brienne had read that word in novels and never had occasion to use it before she'd met Jaime, but these days she thinks it easily once a week.

"What can I say?" he muses. _Insouciantly_. "I'm just that good."

She scoffs. "Oh, please. She was obviously faking. _No one_ is that good."

His mouth drops open, and ha, _now_ he's souciant as hell. "She was _not_ faking. I'd know if she was faking."

"Men always think that," Brienne says pityingly. "Real life isn't porn, Jaime. People don't make those sounds without trying." She might have been something of a late bloomer sex-wise, but she's confident of that much.

Jaime narrows his eyes at her. "Are you questioning my sex god status, Tarth?"

"I'm just saying--"

"'Cause if you doubt me, I'd be happy to provide a demonstration."

She bursts out laughing. "Yeah, I bet you would."

"I would." His eyes are bright, and he's smirking again, but he's holding her gaze as steadily as he can, given the alcohol.

She ignores the quick rebellious flare of heat in her belly and declares, "You _can't_ be serious."

He shrugs. "My honor has been maligned, I have to--"

"Your honor is in your dick?"

"Oh, it's not just my dick," he tells her, his grin going wicked. "It's also my hands, my tongue, my--"

_"Stop."_ She waves her hands in front of her, trying to ward off the images that are suddenly flickering through her brain like a pornographic slideshow.

He crosses his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge in a way that she's positive is intentional. "All I'm saying is that I bet I could get you screaming my name. And you obviously know I'm right, since you're too chicken to let me."

_Ohhhh._ Brienne grits her teeth. She is absolutely not going to fool around with her semi-drunk, rebounding best friend and roommate because he dared her to. She is _not_. She is--

"Fine," she snaps. "Give it your best shot."

After which she experiences a supremely satisfying few seconds, because he blinks and his mouth falls open a little bit and she knows that he didn't really expect her to call his bluff, and now he's either going to have to admit she's right or put his money where his mouth is. Or his mouth where his mouth is, or where her mouth is, or something, but either way, she's got him off-balance. 

Then it catches up to her that she just agreed to let Jaime give her an orgasm, and she doesn't have any personal experience with it but she's fairly certain that best friends and orgasms go together about as well as fire and alcohol: both great on their own when properly contained, but when combined, dangerous for everyone involved. And she really doesn't want to have to find a different place to live.

Jaime sits forward, makes half a move toward her, then stops. "Are we still going to be friends after this?" he asks. There's a hesitance to it, a wince hovering at the corners of his eyes.

And with him looking at her like that, she can't answer anything besides, "Yes. Of course." Fire and alcohol don't _have_ to be uncontrolled; they can burn short and warm and then fade away with no harm done. Right?

"Okay." He nods, almost to himself. "Okay. Good." With that, he drains the rest of his beer and sets it down on the coffee table with a decisive clunk that rings in Brienne's head like a warning bell.

But she doesn't do anything to stop him as he slides toward her so he can lean in slowly, eyes on hers until he's too close for her to see them anymore; he nuzzles against her neck, inhaling deeply as he does. For her part, she can smell the alcohol on him, slightly sour but oddly comforting in its familiarity, and even more so in its promise of future excuses. His arm stretches out behind her, his fingers tracing lightly along the line of her shoulder.

"Can I kiss you?" he asks, his breath warm and damp on her ear.

She swallows hard, which does absolutely nothing to lubricate her dry throat; she wishes her beer were close enough that she could reach. Or that she could move at all. Or breathe. "I assume that's what you usually do, right?" she forces out. "I should get the full experience, I guess. To make it fair."

He laughs low. "Exactly. Your dedication to fairness is a beautiful thing, Tarth. Is that a yes?"

Anything to get him to stop talking to her in that gravelly voice. "Yes, fine, you can kiss--" but before she can finish the sentence, his mouth is on hers. 

Brienne has had her share of moments, over the course of their friendship, where she has very deliberately Not Thought about kissing Jaime, but somehow it's both everything and nothing like she hasn't thought about. He's gentle, and thorough in a way that makes her toes curl; he kisses her slow, with softly parted lips, the beginnings of his breakup beard rasping against her skin, until she can't take it anymore and opens to him, greedy for more. He makes a small noise and his fingers curl into a fist against her shoulder as she sweeps her tongue into his mouth, his other hand sliding up over her knee to rest on her thigh. Fairly high on her thigh, actually, but still not high enough, and she has to concentrate on keeping her hips in place and not just inching forward until his fingers are resting where she's aching for them. 

He's doing more than well enough on his own, she isn't about to give him any hints.

Not that he really seems to need any, pulling his mouth away from hers to drag kisses along her jaw, the line of her neck, making everything go fuzzy around the edges in a completely different way than the beer had. The darkness feels like velvet around her, and she's floating, burning, like one of those funeral ships headed out to sea. Except it doesn't feel like the end of anything, it feels like just the beginning, the rising tide of everything she's tried not to want from him starting to slosh over the top of the dam she built years ago when it had seemed impossible that _anyone_ would want her, much less Jaime Lannister.

His hand moves from her thigh to her stomach, fingers toying with the frayed edge of her t-shirt, the backs of them teasing against her skin as he does. "Can I touch you?" he asks into her neck.

"Yes," she answers, trying to keep her voice steady. Then she remembers that she has hands, too, but before she starts, she figures it's only fair to ask, "Can I touch you?"

"Yes," he breathes immediately. " _Gods_ , yes," and she helps move his hand under her shirt, palm flat against the bare skin of her stomach, before running her own hand up his arm and around the back of his neck, dragging him to her for another kiss.

He moans a little into her mouth and then his hand is moving up, up over her abs until he's palming one of her breasts. He moans again, not so little this time. She arches into him before she can think about it, keeps her tongue busy with his so that she won't start saying anything ridiculous like how she's never felt anything quite like the pads of his long fingers tracing over her nipples. Because they're just fingers and they're just nipples but somehow it's unique, like the pattern of Jaime's fingerprints was somehow created specifically to devastate her, and oh, she's in so much trouble.

Before long, his breathing is going harsher and his kisses hungrier as she runs her hands over his shoulders, the strong planes of his back, up under his shirt so she can feel the muscle moving beneath his skin. "Can I touch you?" he repeats, hand back at her stomach again; she's about to say that she already told him yes, then he adds, "Can I make you come, Brienne?" and _dammit_ , just him _saying_ that gets her embarrassingly close.

She's not about to let him know that, though. "I don't know," she says instead, "can you?" 

He laughs again, his fingers sliding underneath the waistband of her yoga pants, underneath her underwear and down between her folds and oh, _fuck_ , it's so good and she's so _mad_ that it's so good because this is a one-time-only deal and also, she really doesn't want to admit he was right.

"Fuck, you feel amazing," he pants, teeth blunted by her shirt as he sinks them into her shoulder. "You can keep quiet all you want but I can _feel_ you--gods, you're so wet." 

She'd be annoyed by her body's betrayal except he sounds as awed as he is self-satisfied and she doesn't mind that at all. Still, she's not going to give in, and practically chews holes in her lips as he explores her; he's a little clumsy thanks to alcohol and typical first-time awkwardness, but he still knows her well enough to sense the slightest response, and he's smart enough to use it to his advantage. 

When he's found her rhythm and her hips are thrusting helplessly, urgent sounds barely contained inside her throat, he yanks up her shirt with his free hand and ducks down to suck her nipple into his mouth, caressing it with his tongue and then his teeth as he slips two fingers into her cunt. The dual sensation is too much and she can't help it; a short, sharp cry tears out of her, and he hums encouragingly against her breast, redoubling his efforts, letting her grind against the heel of his hand, rutting a little against her hip as he does. And it's _that_ that does it for her as much as anything, the knowledge that he's clinging to the edge of control just like she is, and his mouth is so hot and his fingers are so perfectly rough and she sinks her hand into his hair and fists tight as she bows up and comes with a half-stifled yell.

While she's still coming down, she sees him sink his wet fingers into his mouth like they're some new kind of popsicle, cleaning them off, smearing his lips and tongue with her juices. Then he leans in to kiss her, hard, and she can taste herself in his mouth.

"See?" he says when he pulls away, eyes bright, face flushed with triumph. "I told you."

She's trying to get her breath back. "All I said was 'fuck.'" She's about ninety percent sure that's true. "Is that your name?"

"Well, you have called me that before," he points out, grinning. 

"Only when you deserved it," She realizes that she's stroking the back of his head and can't seem to make herself stop. His hair is so soft, and her whole body feels like it's filled with some sort of sparkling fluff. He is _way_ too fucking good at this.

When he closes his eyes and shifts, tilting his head to give her better access, his erection brushes against her thigh. She looks down at where it's tenting the front of his pants to a degree that she has to admit--to herself--is impressive. Her mouth waters a little.

"Double or nothing?" she asks, even though that's still nothing because they haven't actually bet anything.

He presses his head further into her hand like an insistent dog who wants her to scratch _right… there_. "Hunh?"

"I make you scream _my_ name, I win," she says. 

At that, his eyes snap open. "Yeah?" he says--too eagerly, and he obviously realizes it because she can see the corner of his mouth curl in amusement at himself.

"Well," she says, deliberately solemn, "you did mention my dedication to fairness."

"I did," he agrees. 

"So, it's only fair that I get a shot." She's starting to slide down to the floor now.

He sounds distinctly short of breath when he says, "Definitely."

She uses her back to shove the coffee table out of the way, beer bottles clinking, and kneels between his splayed legs. His hands are resting on the couch; she can see them curl into fists. When she runs her own hands up over his quads--still overdeveloped even though he only plays soccer on the weekends now--he lets out a small, hungry noise and tilts his hips toward her. She looks up at him.

"You're already not doing a very good job of keeping quiet," she teases. He huffs out a laugh.

"A friend of mine told me that positive feedback is very important in encouraging young athletes."

She snickers; somehow she doesn't think her profs would be thrilled about their advice showing up in this context. "Is this a sport?" she asks, pulling his track pants down and discovering he's been going commando under them, which is very on-brand; when they'd first become friends, it had been a surprise to discover that Jaime wasn't, in reality, nearly as much of a slut as his general situation implies. Because it implies quite a bit.

"Yep," he gets out. "National blowjob championship on the line, here--we're all rooting for you."

Just for that, she wants to make him suffer for it first, though his dick is flushed and hard, leaking pre-come already. She stays still for a moment, taking the opportunity to look at him all spread out for her. Imagining the things she wants to do to him, in this dim liminal space where she actually can.

Then he says, "Brienne," low and hoarse and rich with want, " _please_ ," and she can't wait anymore, just closes her hand around the bottom of his shaft and takes him into her mouth.

Above her, he makes a strangled sound of relief and pleasure. "Fuck," he whispers when she bobs up to swirl her tongue around the head. When she sinks down as far as she can, _"Fuuuuck, Brienne,"_ comes out on a groan. Because of course Jaime can't be quiet about anything, ever, so the competitor in Brienne can't help smirking that this is going to be the easiest bet she's ever won; the rest of her, though, is too busy reveling in the silk-and-steel heat of him against her tongue, the way his thigh muscles flex against the hand she's got braced there. His fingers slide into her hair, and she has a second of reflexive worry that he's going to start shoving her around without asking and she's going to have to punch him in the dick, but it's Jaime, so of course he doesn't do that, just pets her head softly, his thumb tracing the line of her ear, making her shiver even as she hollows her cheeks and sucks harder.

He keeps talking, too, telling her how hot she is, how good she feels, _just like that, Brienne, ahhh, suck me, please_ , and none of it is going to win this for her but it's hard to care when he sounds so raw and wrecked, like every move she makes is unraveling him one thread at a time. His scent is strong in her nose and his cock is heavy and thick and the slurping sounds she's making are an obscene soundtrack to his filthy monologue and it's so much that _she_ has to moan, which just pushes him closer to the edge; too soon, he makes a desperate noise and gasps, "I'm gonna--agh, I'm gonna--" and she flattens her tongue and caresses his balls, taking him as deep as possible, urging him on until he comes in her mouth. 

When he's stopped pulsing, she licks him clean, grinning around him as he jerks with each slide of her tongue. The hand on the back of her neck is shaking. When she's done, she rests her forehead against his thigh, trying to empty her mind, trying not to think about what happens next.

"Tie," she hears him say breathlessly after a moment, "but if it's any consolation, congratulations on the championship," and she laughs into his skin.

He tugs gently on the back of her collar until she looks up at him. He really is offensively handsome: bottom lip red where he's bitten it, cheeks flushed, glass-green eyes soft and sated. "Hey," he murmurs. "Still friends, right?"

All she wants to do is curl up on the couch next to him and fall asleep, but that's nowhere in any of the conditions of their bet, so she just nods and braces her hands on his knees, leaning up for one last kiss. "Goodnight, Jaime," she says against his mouth, then flees to her own room.

* * * * * * *

Late the next morning, Brienne is halfway through a bowl of yogurt and granola, scrolling through articles on her phone and not making sense of a word of them, when Jaime wanders into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and damp-haired, like he's run wet fingers through it in an attempt to get it to behave. As with many things about Jaime, it's refusing to do anything of the sort.

He makes his typical wordless, pleased, _hey, the coffee fairy was here_ sound when he sees the half-full pot and pads over to it on bare feet. When he's poured it out and turns around to lean against the counter, she can see that he's chosen the mug she'd given him for Sevenmas a few years back, the one that says _hear me roar_ above the cartoon image of a lion looking much more pouty than threatening. It had reminded her so much of Jaime in the morning that she hadn't been able to resist buying it. For a week afterward, he'd laughed every time he'd seen it.

Now, though, she can't look at his fingers wrapped around the mug without thinking of how they've been inside her-- _inside her_ , holy shit, that had actually happened--and it's too much, in the cheerful daylight, in the kitchen they've shared for almost two years, and she turns her eyes quickly back to her phone.

She can still hear him, though, sipping his coffee. Sipping, and then slurping, increasingly loud and obnoxious until she has no choice but to glare at him.

_"Jaime."_

"Oh, sorry, does that bother you?" he asks innocently, but there's something in his face she doesn't know how to read. Which is an odd feeling, since after all this time, she would have sworn she'd seen his every expression.

Well. Most of them. She'd added a few more to her catalog last night. She can feel her own face heating at the memory--is this just going to be her life, now? Inconvenient sex flashbacks until she has to find somewhere else to live? Essos seems nice this time of year--and sees a small smile curve his lips as he watches her blush.

He takes another sip of coffee--a normal one this time, fortunately--and when he's swallowed it, he says, "So. Last night."

_Shit._ "Uh," she says, by way of answer.

"We were both pretty drunk," he continues, and Brienne's yogurt seems to curdle in her stomach. 

_This is good_ , she tells herself, _just laugh it off and now things can go back to normal, you can just--_

"And I can do better," Jaime concludes. He takes a gulp of his coffee this time, and winces, like he'd forgotten it was hot. "That is, if you'll give me another shot," he manages out of an undoubtedly painful throat. 

She blinks at him for a long moment. On one hand, she's spent most of the morning telling herself that it had been a one-and-done deal and she needs to get it out of her head, so taking him up on this new offer feels like wandering into the wilderness without a map. On the other hand, she'd woken up before dawn thinking about his hands on her, and even a run and--eventually, as a last resort--some furtive masturbation in the shower had barely taken the edge off, so. While her brain might be having some issues with the idea, her body is wondering why she's not halfway across the kitchen already. 

Either way, though, she has to at least pretend to be weighing her options, so she tilts her head to the side. "Same terms?"

He sets down his mug, resting the heels of his hands on the counter on either side of him, leaving his body completely open to her. His smile slides across his face. "Same terms."

She lifts a shoulder. "Only fake sports have ties anyway," she tells him, and just barely manages to get to him in time to smother whatever his comeback is with her mouth. 

"--show you a fucking fake sport," he growls as soon as he can make enough space between them to do it, but he's laughing, wrestling with her like they've done a thousand times except this time there are tongues involved, and his hand is on her ass, and his cock is getting hard against her hip. And even if it's a little strange, doing this sober and in broad daylight, it's a lot less strange than it is hot, and Brienne has been wet for him since before she woke up, and she rolls her hips against him just to hear him groan.

He throws out an arm for balance and almost knocks his coffee mug off the counter. "Shit," he hisses.

"We should probably--" Brienne starts, because as tempting as it is to just strip down right here, the linoleum is old enough to probably never be clean again and there's an obstacle course of Jaime's dishes lying around anyway. 

He's already nodding. "My room or yours?"

Given that his room had recently contained his girlfriend and she's not entirely sure he's had time to wash his sheets, "Mine."

He yanks her in for a comprehensive, knee-weakening kiss, then whispers, "Race you," shoves her away, and takes off before she can even fully process what he's said.

"So much for sportsmanship!" she yells after him, running around the corner into the hallway just in time to see him careen into the wall, overcome by his own momentum. _"Ha!"_ she shouts triumphantly, but he still makes it into her room before she does, so that he's waiting for her, breathing hard and grinning as she pushes him toward the bed. "I should refuse to fuck you just for that," she tells him. "Cheater."

"Oh, relax, that one's not going on the scoreboard--I just wanted you to chase after me with those legs of yours," he says unrepentantly, and the fact that he's got his hands on the back of said legs and is tugging her to straddle him on the bed makes it a little more difficult to be mad at him. 

Once she's balanced over him, she strips her t-shirt off and tosses it on the floor. "Shut up and… what?" He's looking at her strangely, a half-smile playing on his face.

He shakes his head. "Just enjoying the view." He runs his hands up her thighs, up her sides, until he's cupping what there is of her breasts. "I didn't get to look much last night."

When she'd started this, it was sort of her assumption that there'd be nudity involved, but having him just _stare_ at her like that is making her blush, and knowing that she's blushing is just making her blush _more_. "You've seen me in a sports bra a million times," she points out, like logic is the best play, here.

"Yeah, and I'm not mad about that, believe me, but--" He rubs his thumbs over her nipples, and her eyes flutter closed before she can help it. "Kind of some crucial differences, here."

Forget logic; evening the playing field is clearly the way to go. "Off," she says, shoving his shirt up and backing off a little to leave him some room. He sits up, meaning that she gets a nice view of his abs flexing as he yanks his shirt over his head. He's far enough out of conditioning that he's lost some of the six-pack he'd had when they'd first met, but she finds that endearing, as is his tousled hair. Plus, he's still got all that golden skin and lean muscle just begging for her touch. She links her hands behind his neck and leans in so she can feel the friction of his chest hair against her nipples. 

He sinks kisses into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, hands massaging her back as he plasters her torso against his. "Damn, Tarth, nice lats. What's your pull-up max these days?"

"Three sets of twenty," she tells him, distracted, and he makes a helpless sort of noise against her neck. "Are we really talking about pull-ups right now?"

"When you've got numbers like that, hell yes we are," he says, shifting his hips enough that she can feel how hard he is. 

He's pressing right against her clit, and now it's her turn to whimper a little bit. "You're very weird," she informs him, though she can't get all her breath behind it.

He pulls back enough to cock his head. "That's not how you pronounce 'gorgeous and charming.'"

She smiles sweetly at him. "No shit." He laughs, and she kisses him down until he's lying flat again, reveling in the warmth of all his bare skin against hers, the fact that their hands and mouths are free to roam now that they've got plenty of room to maneuver, the fact that she's sober now and every sensation feels like it's sharper and deeper than the night before. They do both make their share of noises, but nothing with the right combination of syllables and volume, nothing to give either one of them an edge; they've shed their pants and underwear and are grinding naked against each other when the ache in her cunt gets overwhelming and she shoves him back a little. "Condom," she pants. "Bedside drawer."

"Yes, coach," he says, grinning at her as he wriggles over in that direction, and she wrinkles her nose.

"Ew, my _kids_ call me that." 

He's rolling the condom down his length now. "Yeah," he says, "but I, as you can clearly see--" and he gestures to his dick, because of course he does--"am an adult, and we're in the process of doing very adult things to each other, so." 

"You'd better get that thing in me before I change my mind," she tells him, only she can't help angling her hips toward him as she says it, and he smirks and crawls over her.

"And they say courtly love is dead," he says into her ear, nudging the entrance of her cunt with his cock. She writhes against him; it feels like she's wet enough that he can just slide right in, and she wants him to, she _wants_ him--

And then she has him, or at least the first few inches, and the stretch and burn is so good and he drops his head to her shoulder and his whole body shudders. _"Fuck,"_ he breathes.

"Yeah," she agrees. Gods, it's been too long since she's done this. Six months, she figures, doing the math in her head, until Jaime pulls out and thrusts in again, all the way in this time, and there's not much room in her head for anything but the way he feels inside her.

He goes slow for the first few strokes, dragging his length in and out of her at a maddening pace that must be for her benefit because she can feel the barely-leashed tension of it in his muscles as they shift under her hands. It's good-- _very_ good--but she can tell it could be better, so she wraps her calves around the backs of his thighs and pulls. "Come on, I'm not some delicate flower--if you want screaming, you're going to have to do better than that."

"Oh, challenge _fucking_ accepted," he says, driving in hard on the word, hard enough that she can feel him hit a delicious new spot inside her, the shock reverberating as she arches her back and moans. His laugh is low and self-satisfied, but she'll let him have it given that she's on her way to being pretty satisfied, too. 

It escalates fairly quickly from there, until their muscles are shaking from the effort, his breath rasping in her ear, his chest heaving. The sounds he's making are getting louder, too, which is revving her up even more, and somewhere out of the three remaining brain cells she can access, something occurs to her.

"You know," she tells him, leaning up to catch his earlobe between her teeth, "there was one time I didn't mind hearing you through your door."

The effect is immediate: his rhythm stutters and his breath hisses in through his lips. "Oh yeah?" He slips a hand down between them and starts rubbing at her clit, like he knows they might not have much time left.

She hitches her legs higher, locks her ankles behind his back. The new angle means she has to breathe through a stab of pleasure before she can go on. "Yeah. There was this one night a few months back that practice got cancelled and I went out for happy hour with Margaery and Sansa instead. I got home early, and you were in your room--alone--but I could hear you making these… noises." Noises not unlike what he's making now, which had been unmistakable even through the door. When she'd realized what he was doing, it had gone through her like lightning. "I knew I shouldn't be listening, but I was a little drunk and it had been a while for me and I… I wanted to hear you. So even though I kept telling myself I should go into my room and give you your privacy, I just… didn't."

"Oh, _gods_ , Brienne," he groans, fucking her faster, harder, and it feels so good that Brienne's vision is swimming around the edges.

"Instead," she continues, her voice is going increasingly unsteady as he pounds into her, the current sizzling between the memory of that night and the reality of his cock in her now, "I went over to the couch and--"

"Fuck, Brienne, _fuck_ \--"

"I spread my legs, and I slid my hand into my underwear--" She still wasn't entirely sure what had possessed her, but she'd been so turned on, so desperate.

"Don't stop, Brienne, don't--" He's right on the edge, his fingers going clumsy on her clit.

"I jerked off to the sounds you were making, Jaime. It felt so fucking incredible, and--" He makes a noise like he's dying, and when she tells him, "I don't think I've ever come so fast in my life," that does it: he yells,

"Fuck, fuck, _Brienne_ ," loud enough to piss off the neighbors as he thrusts a couple more times, stiffens, and comes, buried as far inside her as he can get. 

He's just barely finished shuddering before he mumbles, "Oh, screw _you_ , Tarth," in a tone that's equal parts doomed and amused as he collapses over her, sweat-slick and clearly fully aware of what just happened.

She laughs and cards her fingers through his hair. "If it's any consolation, you did a pretty damn good job of screwing me just now." Never let it be said that she's not gracious in victory.

"Just tell me it was true," he begs, mouth open against the skin of her shoulder. "Tell me you didn't just make that story up to win the bet."

"A hundred percent true," she promises. At some point she might be sorry she told him about it because he'll probably give her shit until the end of time, but it _had_ done the trick, and besides, he's clearly into it, and she's very into the fact that he's into it.

"Seven fucking hells and every demon in them, it was worth it." He bends his neck so he can tongue her nipple, his softening cock still inside her. Brienne is still on fire, restless energy sparking through her, and he focuses all his slowly-increasing attention on her breasts and nipples until she clenches around him and makes him gasp again.

"Sensitive," he explains, pulling out of her with a rueful look. "Sorry, I got distracted, there." He stands up to strip off the condom, and she enjoys the sight of his bare ass, the long lines of his back, while he tosses it in the trash. Then he kneels at the end of the bed, and thank every god old and new and yet to be discovered, because if Brienne doesn't have an orgasm soon, she might actually die. "This is technically part of the same sex act, right?" he asks as his hands drift from her knees along her thighs, spreading her wider. His thumbs come to rest just at the junctures of her legs and pelvis. "So a tie is still theoretically on the table."

"I'll allow it," she decides, as if she's not willing to say just about anything right now to get his mouth on her. And if it means he's going to really put in his best effort, so much the better.

"Sweet," he says, and dives in. 

It's not unexpected, given the amount of exercise it gets, that Jaime's tongue is one of his more powerful muscles, but even having it in her mouth and on various places on her body hasn't _quite_ prepared her for what it feels like to have it between her legs. Maybe his honor really is in there, if by "honor" he means "vibrator-like ability to bring her close to orgasm in a shockingly short amount of time." He's licking and sucking like he's going for a world record, and she's got both hands fisted in the sheets, and she feels like she's been five feet from the edge of this sex cliff for hours, and now she's finally almost there, just about to tumble over the edge into blissful clouds, when suddenly he pulls his mouth away.

"Jaime!" she shrieks, outraged, her eyes snapping open, which means that she can see his smug grin and the way he licks a finger and traces the line of a point on her inner thigh before ducking his head back down and getting back to work. "Aw, _shit_ ," she groans, but it feels too good for her to care right now, and she might as well get her money's worth, so she shouts his name as well as various curses and appeals to a selection of deities as he brings her right back to the edge and over.

Afterward, he wipes his chin off on the sheet and crawls up her body again, still wearing that unbearably smug pussy-eating grin, with the most unbearable thing about it being that he might actually have earned it. 

"Cheater," she accuses him again. It's mostly on principle, though; she can't get much force behind it due to how she feels like she's floating somewhere near the ceiling. Maybe her righteous competitive indignation is actually stored in her cunt and he's temporarily licked it right out of her.

"Hey, we didn't specify a _reason_ for the screaming--I was just making the most of my resources," he says, grin fully intact.

"Ugh," is all she can muster--he knows what he did--while he kisses her shoulder, then her neck, then her mouth. 

"I'm gonna go get water, you want any?" he asks.

"Sure," she agrees. It will give her the chance to go pee anyway, and besides, she could use a minute or two to get her higher functions back online. She's never made a sex bet with her best friend before, so she's not exactly sure what happens afterwards; she's basically assuming he's going to drop off the water for her and then go on with whatever he was planning on for the day. 

When she gets back from their shared bathroom, she meets him in the doorway. He's still naked, his face pink and shining like he's splashed water on it, and he's balancing two glasses of water and a bowl of the high-protein cereal he likes. He makes a small, disappointed noise when he sees that she's put on her t-shirt and a fresh pair of boxer briefs, but he only hands her one of the glasses, climbs back into her bed, and fluffs a pillow at his back.

She blinks. _Okay then._

"Game's on soon, right?" he asks.

Brienne glances at the clock. "Yeah. First pitch is at 1:05."

"So are we gonna watch?" he asks when she doesn't move. 

She shakes herself a little and then makes her way toward the bed. He's chosen the opposite side from her usual one--whether by choice or coincidence, she's not sure. "I don't know why you want to subject yourself to this," she tells him dryly, trying to get back to her normal rhythm. 

He gives her a cheerful grin, and it occurs to her that he's clean-shaven, where he hadn't been the night before, and that's… interesting. "Because you're gonna watch the Casterly match with me tomorrow in exchange."

"Am I?" She gets herself settled comfortably and flips on the TV.

He answers around a mouthful of cereal, "Yup."

"If you spill cereal in my bed, you're washing the sheets," she warns.

He points at the screen with his spoon. "Hey, look, the game's starting."

By the end of the third inning, Brienne is surprised to find that it feels almost like a typical Saturday. During the breaks in action, she confesses her nerves about the final presentation she's got coming up for her Sports Ethics class; he regales her with a story about how the other afternoon after his shift was over, he'd told his friend and coworker Addam that there was a huge leak in one of the bathroom stalls that needed immediate attention, and when Addam had grimly suited up with his rubber gloves and mop, he'd found the giant leek that Jaime had left perched happily on the toilet. Brienne laughs so hard about that that her abs ache, and the only difference between this and a hundred other days they've had like it is that Jaime is naked, and Brienne's cunt is still throbbing a bit from his dedicated efforts. She doesn't mind either of those things, because at some point, presumably, Jaime is going to put some clothes on and the echo of his touch will fade and this strange sex detour of theirs is going to be well and truly over, and she's not sorry to hold off on that for a little while yet.

The Pirates manage to keep it close until the seventh inning, when the bullpen comes in and proceeds to give up six runs in rapid succession. After the last one, Brienne sinks down into the bed and pulls the covers over her head. "Whyyyyyy?" she moans. "Why do I do this to myself? Sports are terrible and no one should like them."

Jaime's laughter is shaking the bed next to her, but he makes a sympathetic noise and wriggles down until he's sharing her little blanket fort. "Hey, just one six-run home run and they're right back in this thing," he says, and she scowls and flips him off.

"Not helping."

His green eyes go brighter, and he grabs her hand and gently bites the end of her extended finger, then swirls his tongue around it to soothe the sting. 

Brienne's pulse stutters and then starts to thud in her veins, until she can feel it right there in the pad of her finger, right there against his tongue.

"I bet I can make you forget about the game." His smile is slow. Slow and dangerous.

She swallows. Every rational instinct is telling her to nip this in the bud now, before anything has a chance to get weird or complicated. "I don't know," she finds herself saying. "This game really sucks."

One side of his mouth tilts up, and he catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth. "You like the sucking when I do it, though."

Well, she can't deny that, and it would be a shame to have a gorgeous, naked man in her bed and not take advantage of the mind-erasing possibilities of it, right? "That was terrible, but I could really use some distraction, so let's go," she tells him before she can talk herself out of it, and he's laughing when he pulls her over on top of him.

* * * * * * *

As an athlete, Brienne has been on her share of strict conditioning diets, and mostly, her willpower is pretty good: in college, during the season, she'd eaten some combination of poached cod and grilled chicken and steamed vegetables nine nights out of ten without complaint. (Jaime, on the other hand, had complained vociferously, but after seeing the results she was getting, he'd started showing up for dinner more and more often, even learning to cook things to her specifications along the way.) But there are certain things she just can't seem to find her self-control for, like the fact that she's pretty sure that if provided with an unlimited amount of tortilla chips and salsa, she would absolutely keep eating them until her stomach exploded or she shriveled into a salty husk, whichever came first.

Suddenly having the option to have sex with Jaime is, she's discovering, more or less the chips and salsa of her previously-disciplined life. 

It's not entirely accurate to say that she finds herself thinking about it all the time, but on the other hand, seriously, she's thinking about it _all the time_. One problem is that the more they do it, the better they get at it, to the point where she can really see what Taena had been yelling about. Another problem is that Jaime is having just as much trouble maintaining focus as she is, so between the two of them, they're turning into degenerate gamblers with startling rapidity. He stops by her tiny office late one night while she's going blind on game tape, trying to figure out why her cleanup hitter has been late on the fastball recently, and somehow she ends up complaining about how she can't see the stars in the city lights and he ends up fucking her in the outfield on the promise that _he_ can make her see stars. (He does.) He gets stuck working a double shift on a Saturday and when he wakes up bleary-eyed the next day, she's waiting with his favorite breakfast burritos and a bet that she can beat his personal best for orgasms in a twenty-four hour period. (She does.) He's also extremely determined to make her come just from penetration, even though she's never done it before; that one takes him several tries, but he finally gets to chalk up a point on their dry-erase scoreboard after he bends her over the back of the couch one afternoon, driving into her from behind at an angle that she's pretty sure gives her a vision of the face of at least one god, so. Apparently there's a first time for everything.

It's also a supremely useful arrangement sometimes, like the day when she's trying to study for her Economics and Finance final and he's bored and antsy and particularly Jaime-ish and she's genuinely worried that she's going to have to murder him and find some way to dispose of his beautiful body.

"Are you done yet?" he asks for the fifth time in as many minutes, stretching his arm across the kitchen table to her like he's in some kind of classical painting.

_"Jaime."_

_"Brienne,"_ he echoes dramatically. "Come on. It's a gorgeous day. Let's go do something."

"Like what?" she sighs, only half paying attention. Sometimes if she gives him just enough input to go on, he'll tire himself out like a spinning top.

"Bet you I can--"

That gets her full attention. "Jaime! I am not performing any sex acts with you outside in full daylight." 

A lazy, leonine grin spreads across his face. "I like the way you say 'performing sex acts.' It sounds so dirty."

She rolls her eyes and then trains them on the page in front of her again, ignoring the growing heat between her legs. "You think half the things I say sound dirty. And I have a final in three days."

"Three days?!" he repeats. "That's so much time! Look, just take a break now and I'll help you afterward, I promise."

Brienne hesitates; Jaime's actually a shockingly good study partner, when he can focus enough to do it. Compensating for his dyslexia had taught him dedicated, structured habits, and he's quick to pick things up and see the big picture. But still, _her_ habits dictate that she should be studying _now_ , not fooling around with him, and--

"Come on," he wheedles, inching his chair closer to hers, obviously sensing a possible opening. "You know I'm not going to shut up otherwise."

Which is, apparently, the end of her rope: she closes her book with a snap. "I bet I can make you shut up," she tells him, and watches the lowkey horniness he always seems to have in his eyes these days go from a hopeful little candle to a full crackling fire.

"What did you have in mind?" His voice is in that gravel range that seems to drag over all of her nerve endings. 

And she honestly hadn't had anything in particular in mind until just now, but she's been so annoyed, and he's so transparently turned on that she just kind of wants to _destroy_ him a bit, so she jerks her head toward his bedroom. "Go lay down on your bed. Face-up."

He scrambles to obey her, and she's glad he does it fast enough that he won't see how much she's blushing. Yet.

She keeps her chin high as she stalks into his bedroom, stripping off her leggings and underwear as soon as she gets inside. He's waiting on the bed, as promised, and she lets the momentum of her frustration and anticipation carry her all the way up his body. She stops for a thorough kiss along the way, but ultimately she ends up straddling his shoulders, her bush hovering near his chin.

When she looks down to check on him, his pupils are blown wide and dark and he's practically drooling. No need to worry about whether he's still with her, apparently; he's even got his head positioned just below the pillow, like this is what he'd been hoping for. He slides his hands along her thighs, curves them around to grip her ass. 

"Hey," she says. "Did I say you could touch me?" Testing it out, seeing how they both like it.

His hands drop back to his sides. "Sorry," he manages, hoarse, tongue flicking out to wet his lips.

"This is my bet, I'm calling the shots," she tells him.

"Yes, okay, whatever you want, yes." His eyes are bright and the muscles of his upper arms are jumping against the insides of her calves. And she has no idea what she's doing, really, but whatever it is, it's getting her so wet she's worried she's going to start dripping on his face, and he's looking up at her cunt like she'd look at a juicy fastball down the middle, so she figures she's doing all right.

He's got a thick mahogany headboard, a pain-in-the-ass heavy one that she'd helped him essentially steal from his childhood home, and she wraps her hands around the top of it. "I'm going to shut you up with my cunt, Jaime," she tells him. "That's what we both deserve, don't you think?"

_"Yes,"_ he answers, so pained it's almost a whine, "yes, please, Brienne, _please_ , let me--"

She tilts her hips forward and down, until she can feel his rapid breaths against her pussy lips. "Good," she says, "time to put that mouth to use," and his groan is almost lost inside her as he eagerly devotes himself to the task. 

The angle isn't what she's used to but she discovers that she kind of loves it: the control it gives her, the way he can lap at her folds and dip his tongue inside her without having to contort his neck to any odd angles. When she sinks down on him a little more, just to get a bit more pressure, the moaning sound he makes seems to vibrate in all her most sensitive places. She's slightly worried about smothering him, though he's strong enough to buck her off if necessary; still, "You can move your hands, if you want," she tells him breathlessly, just in case, and he immediately brings them to her ass to pull her even closer, fingers digging in hard enough to sting. She arches her back and grips the headboard hard, all but shoving her clit into his mouth, and he takes the hint, sucking hard and then flicking it with his tongue. Her legs are starting to shake.

"Good, Jaime," she tells him, "you're so good for me, gods, now every time I want you to stop talking I'm going to have to think about this. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to me?" She can feel his shoulders shaking with laughter, and her own half-agonized laugh ends in a sharp cry as he plunges his thumb into her all the way up to his palm. All she can hear is her own sobbing breaths and the sloppy sounds of him devouring her, all she can think is _yes yes yes more yes_ , all she knows is that they are _absolutely_ doing this again, and then he crooks his thumb just right and she's coming, shuddering and gasping as she soaks his face. 

She feels all liquid and full of light, and she collapses forward against the headboard, trying to suck air into her lungs. He's panting, too, craning his neck up to give her a few last licks. She's distantly aware of his arm moving; the thumb that had been inside her disappears, followed by a rhythmic motion that's become very, very familiar. Sure enough, when she climbs sideways off him, she can see that his face is shiny with her juices and his eyes are hazy with lust, and he's got his jeans open and his hand is tugging at his cock, rough jerks like he can't quite get his motor skills together.

"Did I tell you you could do that?" she asks him, and it's a little more difficult now that she's looking him right in the face, but his response is worth it, the way his hand falls away immediately, and his neck makes a beautiful arch as his eyes squeeze shut with pleasure that's just on the right side of pain.

"Please, Brienne, I need to, please." His hips twitch helplessly into nothing, and he's full-on babbling now. She doesn't want him to actually lose his mind, so she crawls backward a little on her hands and knees.

"Shh," she soothes him, "shhhh, I've got you," and almost as soon as she closes her mouth around his dick, he tenses up and shoots down her throat.

Afterward, he strokes her hair mindlessly, murmuring "Gods, Brienne, _fuck_ that was so hot, holy shit," aftershocks trembling through him. There's a sticky mess between her legs, and she figures his face must be feeling pretty much the same, so she pulls away long enough to stumble with shaky knees to the bathroom. After she's cleaned herself up a bit, she comes back with a warm washcloth, which she uses to wipe the worst/best of the evidence off his chin and neck, all while he looks at her with a slightly shell-shocked smile and shining eyes. She almost has to laugh that for once, she actually does seem to have worn out his tongue for a while. When she's done, she nudges him until he's lying diagonally, both of them clear of the not-insignificant wet spot, and curls up with her forehead pressed to his shoulder.

Everything they'd just done had been new to her, everything raw and intimate and pulled up out of fantasies that she's never dared to trust anyone with, even if she knows that people do much more adventurous things every day. But she doesn't do those things, usually, and she thinks that it should feel awkward, being so exposed to him. The thing is, though, that he's seen her ugly-cry after she'd dumped Hyle's useless ass, and he's seen her draped over the toilet after her first real night of drinking, and he's seen her laugh so hard she peed herself a little bit, so this feels like just one more mark in that column, one more way for them to know each other.

After a few minutes, he rolls over on his side, tugging her with him so that her arm is wrapped around his waist. "You've got to study," he says, in direct contradiction to what his body is telling her. "I'll help if you want."

The hair at the back of his neck is damp, the smell of his shampoo mixing with the lingering scent of sweat and of her. "In a while," she says, and pulls him closer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find myself wishing I'd split these two sections up a bit differently, mostly because this second one is shorter, but. 😬 TOO LATE NOW. Thank you so, SO much for all your lovely comments--I will be replying! I just wanted to get this completed!--and kudos/recs/reblogs, and I hope you enjoy the conclusion!
> 
> *A third, follow-up chapter added 5/2/2020, FYI!

Despite being busy with a customer, Jaime gives her a quick nod when she walks into the bar, and then his eyebrows raise as he takes in what she's wearing: a button-down shirt and a pencil skirt, low heels, one of her few outfits that's not built around either athletic pants, leggings, or jeans. She waves at him and takes her typical seat at the corner of the bar, slinging her backpack to the floor.

When the Old Fashioned he's been working on has been garnished and delivered, he strolls in her direction. "I'm sorry, miss, are you lost? Because clearly you're much too fancy and important to be slumming it in a place like this."

She flips him off, though there's a warmth in his eyes that seems to soak right into her skin, and she can't help basking in it a little.

"Ahhh, there she is," he says, grinning. He leans forward, elbows on the bar, forearms crossed in front of him. "How'd the presentation go today?"

"Good, actually." Assuming it had been enough to earn her a passing grade, she's now officially halfway to her Masters. "Professor Stark said it was one of the best she'd seen this week."

His grin widens. "Of course she did." He reaches under the bar and comes back up with a piccolo of champagne and a glass to match. "I took the liberty of setting this one aside for you. Don't tell Addam I gave you the good stuff," he adds under his breath, with a glance over his shoulder even though Addam is nowhere to be seen at the moment.

"Oh," Brienne says, her stomach fluttering oddly at the gesture, "I don't want to get you in trouble, I'm good with just beer--"

Jaime rolls his eyes as he pops open the bottle and tilts the glass so he can fill it. "Shut up--we're celebrating, and you can't do that with some shitty beer. And yes, of course I'm going to tell Addam. Gods, I was joking, don't give me that look." She wrinkles her nose at him, and he slides the champagne across the bar to her. "I'm proud of you, Tarth," he says, knocking a knuckle against the side of the glass, a work-appropriate version of a toast; even though Brienne knows a lot of bartenders drink on the job, Jaime is scrupulous about it, and it's one of the things she appreciates about him. 

She raises the glass to him, a glow blooming in the center of her chest. "I owe you one, when we get home," she says without thinking; he waggles his eyebrows at her, and she flushes red--they're in _public_ \--and tries to hide it with a gulp of champagne. "Hey," she says, when a couple blessedly comes in the door, "you have customers," and Jaime winks at her before sauntering over to help them, his customer service smile firmly in place.

She stays in her little corner as more and more customers trickle in, textbook open in front of her and highlighter busy. Over the time that Jaime's been working there, she's found that she enjoys doing her lowkey studying at the bar, though she hasn't had the chance in a while, between her finals and her extracurricular activities with Jaime. Being here keeps her more focused than she would be at home, with all the other clamoring items on her to-do list; she likes Addam and Dacey and Bronn and Jaime's other coworkers; most of all, she finds it strangely soothing, knowing that Jaime is there to tease her into the occasional break, or that she can demand immediate service if he needs rescuing from an overly chatty customer.

Tonight, she finds herself looking over at him more often than usual. And it feels like every damn time she does, he's got someone flirting with him. Which is normal--Jaime takes a very Will Flirt For Tips and Also Ego approach to his job, not to mention that it's how he's met most of the women he's actually ended up dating--and it's one of the many entries on the list of things that Brienne normally likes to give him shit about. But watching him now, when she knows exactly what it feels like to have his tongue buried between her thighs but she doesn't actually have a framework for what that means, it doesn't seem quite as amusing as it has in the past.

After a while, Addam comes by with a beer for her. "Here you go. Courtesy of the king of love and beauty over there, since he can't get away," he says, tilting his head toward where Jaime is flipping bottles to impress a small gaggle of giggling businesswomen who are high on the tail end of happy hour. Brienne can't help remembering how much broken glass she and Jaime had had to clean up during the long, dark time that he'd been practicing that particular skill.

She looks at the beer and frowns. On one hand, she doesn't want Jaime's pity beer; on the other hand, observing this sober is becoming less and less fun, and leaving too soon would be conspicuous, so she takes a few gulps.

"I hear congratulations are in order," Addam goes on.

"Huh?" she says absently, distracted by the redhead who's leaning over the bar to give Jaime the best possible view of her cleavage.

"I said congratulations on your presentation," Addam says, in the mild, unflappable way that he has. "Are you okay?"

Brienne realizes she's staring, and drags her eyes back to Addam's face. It's a good face, and he's a good guy, and she momentarily considers trying to flirt with him to see if she can make Jaime jealous, then immediately hates herself for even having the thought. _Maiden help me._ Jaime and Addam both deserve better than that.

"Just tired," she lies. "I'll probably head out soon, I was up early this morning. Can I get the check when you get a chance?"

"Lannister's covering it," Addam tells her, eyebrow raised eloquently as he looks back and forth between her and Jaime. "If you're going home soon, I'll bring you some water."

"Thanks," she says gratefully, and takes the beer in slow sips as she tries to go back to her textbook.

It's not long after that when Jaime finally makes his way over, unwinding his apron from around his hips. "Hey," he says, his easy smile vastly different than the ones he'd been aiming at the businesswomen and their collective cleavage. In this moment, Brienne isn't sure whether she's flattered or insulted by that. "Addam said you were leaving soon."

"I'm tired," she says. "Big day."

He nods. "Take a break with me first?" he asks, with a hopeful look that's annoyingly tempting, and _fuck_ , she should just walk away now before she makes this any more complicated.

"Thanks, but I should go," she says, shoving what's left of her beer away as she starts to stretch down for her backpack.

"Wait." Jaime puts his hand on her arm to stop her, then leans close, so close his mouth is right against her ear. "Your legs in that skirt have been driving me crazy all night. My break is fifteen minutes, but if you come out to my car with me, I bet I can make you come in five."

She can feel goosebumps prickling over her arms at the suggestion, at the feel of his lips on her skin. And it's confusing that being frustrated isn't so far off from being horny, because it's with a mixture of both that she says, "Okay, you're on," and leaves her bag stowed behind the bar as she follows him out the back door.

As soon as it closes behind them, he turns, dragging her to him for a hungry kiss. She kisses him back with more teeth than usual, and he pulls away, panting. "Okay, hold up. Are you pissed off at me for some reason, or have you just not had enough to eat today?"

"Are you taking bets from anyone else?" she snaps before she can stop herself, then clamps her mouth shut, too late.

"Am I what?"

"You heard me." She tosses her hair out of her eyes, annoyed and defiant. "Look, I know we haven't talked about this, so whatever the answer is, it's fine, truly, but. I just want to know. This thing, this…" She waves a hand between the two of them. "This physical thing. Are you doing this with anybody else right now?"

"I mean, when would I have had the time?" he asks, incredulous.

She barely restrains a growl. "That's not an actual answer, Jaime, and it sounds an awful lot like a line I've heard before. Just be honest with me."

"It's not a line, it's--" Now it's his turn for frustration. "No," he says decisively. "No, I haven't been with anyone else since we started 'this physical thing.'" She can practically see the air-quotes hovering in front of him. "Have you?"

And honestly, after having spent most of her life with people assuming she'd die alone thanks to her looks, her single-minded pursuit of her goals, her everything, she weirdly appreciates that he's aware that she's got options. "No," she says, softening. "I haven't either."

She sees his shoulders relax. "Okay," he says, mouth tilting up on one side. "I'm glad to hear that. So. Did we just agree to something?"

She laughs a little, her frustration fading into a giddy sort of warmth that starts just behind her sternum and rolls over her whole body. "I think we did." She holds out a hand. "For as long as we're doing this--no side bets?"

He shakes it firmly. "No side bets." Then he yanks so that she stumbles into him, her free hand coming up to steady her against his chest. "And now," he says, his voice dropping and his eyes wicked in the shadows, "I've still got--" he checks his watch over her shoulder. "Nine minutes left. Are you gonna let me finger-fuck you in the back of my car or what?"

"Well, just for the sake of your honor," she tells him, already pulling him in that direction.

Even his back seat is much too small for two people of their height, which makes it hotter somehow and definitely more hysterical, trying to pretzel themselves into position without sacrificing any ligaments. Fortunately his fingers slip inside her as easily as ever, and over the past few weeks he's learned how to take her exactly where she needs to go with devastating efficiency. With thirty-five seconds left on his self-imposed time limit, while he's murmuring in her ear about all the many and varied ideas the skirt has given him-- _I could be the student that you make stay after class; I could take you out to dinner, slide my hand up the inside of your thigh and make you come right there at the table_ \--she finds herself gasping her release up toward the cheap roof upholstery.

She reaches down to return the favor, but he just catches her hand and shakes his head. "No time and too messy," he explains. Then he chuckles. "Thank the Seven I work behind a bar, right?" 

He helps her tug her skirt back into place, though he also takes her thong--an evil necessity thanks to the skirt--and hangs it over his rearview mirror, which is... less helpful. She looks at it for a second, then shrugs; she's more comfortable without fabric biting into her ass-crack anyway. That earns her a delighted grin, and he gives her one last, quick, hard kiss before folding himself out of the car. She winces in amused sympathy at his halting boner-walk as she follows him back inside. 

Jaime detours to the men's room--"Employees must wash hands after delivering life-altering orgasms, it's in the handbook," he informs her with a barely-straight face--and Brienne emerges into the bar to find that despite the respectable crowd, her seat is still available. She suspects she's got Addam or Dacey to thank for that. 

Jaime, returning with his hands slightly pink and smelling of soap, slides her a new beer before diving back into his work with a cheerful, "What can I get you ladies this evening?"

She shakes her head and tries to go back to her Public Relations book, but she finds herself reading the same paragraph over and over, until finally she gives up and steals a look at Jaime. He's on full charm offensive: wide smile, golden hair glinting in the light refracted off the liquor bottles, forearms on distracting display as he works the cocktail shaker with practiced ease. He's got a group of three women in front of him--students, judging by the KLU logos on their clothes--and Brienne is pretty sure she counts at least one set of weakened knees when Jaime offers them a wink along with their cocktails.

Brienne waves Addam over. "Can I get their round of drinks?" she asks, tipping her head toward the girls.

His brow furrows. "Do you know them?"

"No, but I'm celebrating, remember? I'd buy you one, too, if I thought you'd take it," she adds, smiling, and she means it.

That gets a grin out of him. "Dacey'd kick my ass," he tells her with a conspiratorial look that gives Brienne the sudden conviction that he's not un-turned-on by that prospect. Apparently she's missed some things in the few weeks since she's been here. But before she can ask him any follow-up questions, he heads off toward Jaime's group of admirers, and she can see him gesturing toward her as he explains the situation. When they look over at her, obviously confused, she raises her beer to them.

"Just finished my last final," she calls to them over the noise. "I figured since you're here, you probably did, too?"

"Heyyyyy! Fuck finals!" they all chorus, laughing, holding up their drinks in a return salute. Before she takes a long pull of her beer, she can see Jaime shaking his head and grinning at her.

Later, after the front door is locked and the closing checklist is all marked off, and Addam and Dacey have headed out to do whatever it is that Brienne is now highly suspicious that they're doing, she abandons all pretense of studying and just watches Jaime. He's counting out his tips, mouth moving vaguely as he slides the bills from one hand to the other. He's had a good night, clearly, and he tucks the wad of cash into his pocket with a pleased smile as he makes his way over to her.

"Hi," he says, leaning on his tiptoes over the bar so he can kiss her. 

"Hi," she answers. "How're you holding up, slugger?"

He wrinkles his nose. "Tired." Then a mischievous light comes into his eyes. "I've got this incredibly sexy roommate, is the thing, and she's just... _insatiable_. Can't keep her hands off me."

"Really?" she asks dryly.

"Mmhmm."

"You poor thing."

He nods. "I'm very brave." He leans over to kiss her again, long and lingering. 

The lights are dimmed and Jaime's lips and tongue are warm, as familiar to her now as the particular sound he makes when he has his first sip of coffee in the morning. Something cracks open in Brienne's chest, and she finds herself wishing he'd used a different word than _roommate_. But she's had a front-row seat to more than one of Jaime's romantic relationships, and she knows she doesn't fit anywhere into that picture. And at least they'd settled something tonight; she should be happy about that. 

She yanks herself back to reality and whispers against his mouth, "Bet I can suck you off behind the bar without getting DNA in any inappropriate places." 

When he groans his agreement, she sets aside her silly fantasies and forces herself to smile.

* * * * * * *

"One rosé and one white, got it," Brienne calls over her shoulder to Sansa and Margaery as she bumps through the door into her kitchen. Her feet are killing her; she can run five miles three times a week and barely feel it, but she is in no way conditioned to keep up with those two on a shopping trip. Despite that, though, she's ready to call the afternoon a success: Margaery and Sansa seem to be as happy together as ever, and Brienne's light, flowy, newly-purchased skirt is swishing cheerfully around her knees. She'd almost chickened out on buying it, until Sansa had caught her twirling in it in the dressing room and insisted that it was obviously meant to be hers. The slip of it against her skin has been giving her little thrills ever since.

"--all that wine, you're gonna need snacks," she can hear Jaime saying as he comes through the doorway not long after. He'd been watching some miscellaneous home renovation show when they'd come laughing through the front door, and his relaxed gaze had sharpened as soon as he'd spotted Brienne--or, more specifically, her half-naked legs.

That had been pretty thrilling, too.

Now, she looks over at him, watches him kick the kitchen door shut behind him. "Oops," he says, "draft in here, I guess," and then he's backing her up against the refrigerator, scraping his teeth along her collarbone. "I like the skirt, Tarth," he tells her, while the heat that's been rolling through her belly coalesces to an ache. "I mean, not that I'm not extremely into your whole 'I could break out into feats of athleticism at any moment' thing, but." He leans down to slip his fingers underneath the hem, dragging them up her outer thigh unimpeded, the fabric silky and cool against her as it bunches around his wrist. "This is just so… accessible."

"Is it?" she asks, low and throaty. She tips her head back so he can mouth at her neck. "I hadn't noticed."

"So you didn't buy this at least in part because you liked my ideas the other night?" He tucks a finger beneath the elastic of her underwear, just over her hip. "That's very disappointing. I guess I'm going to have to come up with some more ideas."

"Jaime," she says, laughing, keeping her voice down with an effort, "Margaery and Sansa are waiting."

"Mmm." He licks the base of her throat. "Bet you I can--"

"Do you guys need any help?" Sansa asks, peering around the door, and on sheer, unfiltered reflex, Brienne shoves Jaime away so hard he stumbles back a few steps. 

For an agonizingly long moment, nobody moves. Sansa's big blue eyes are wide and shocked, Jaime's are going steadily hotter with hurt and anger. Then Sansa blinks and starts slowly withdrawing her head behind the door, which would be hilarious if Brienne weren't consumed by the fact that her best friend is looking at her like she's jammed a knife between his shoulderblades.

"You know what? We're just gonna go," Sansa calls through the gap between the door and the frame. "I'll call you later, Brie."

Given the dead silence in the kitchen, Brienne has every opportunity to hear the rustling out in the living room, followed by Margaery whisper-shrieking, "Oh my gods, they've been giving each other brojobs all this time? I _knew it_!" before being hushed by Sansa. A few seconds later, the front door opens and closes.

As soon as it does, Jaime jerks to life like someone flipped his power switch. "What the fuck was that about?" he snaps. 

"I'm sorry, I panicked, I just--"

"Panicked? You pushed me away like I was on fire, Tarth. Are you embarrassed to tell your friends about this?" he demands. "About how you're fucking some fuckup bartender who can barely pay his rent some months?"

Brienne winces; that wound just never quite seems to heal, no matter how many times she's tried to help him stitch it back up. "You _know_ I've never thought that," she says firmly. "I just--"

But he's already rolling over her. "Mother's tits, _you_ were the one who came to _my_ bar the other night, all dressed up and watching me with those eyes of yours. So it's okay as long as it's in front of strangers, is that it? You just don't want anyone knowing the dirty details?" 

That mental image of herself--mooning over him, awkward in her unfamiliar clothes, everyone around them probably watching her with pity--reaches right into the dark corners where she's hidden all her teenage insecurities and plucks on them like bowstrings. "Oh, I'm sorry if I cramped your style with all your pretty customers, _Lannister_. And I'm sorry that I _know_ you, and I know what you're like when you're really into someone, and it involves a lot more flowers and candlelight dinners and a lot less _hey, why don't you finish your beer so we can fuck._ And besides," she goes on, the dam well and truly broken now, words spilling out of her, "since it wasn't just strangers there the other night, and since we're being so open about this with our friends, I assume you told Addam and Dacey, right? Or did you let them believe that it was just poor lonely Brienne having a crush?" She can tell by his face that he hasn't told them, and it hurts, just like she knows it had hurt him that _she_ hasn't told anybody, and she's so frustrated with them both that she could scream. 

"Come on," she presses. "You explained to them how we're only doing this for points, right?" She throws an arm out to the side, gesturing to and nearly hitting the stupid scoreboard that they've got stuck to the side of the refrigerator. "You explained to them exactly what this means? Because honestly, at this point, I have no fucking clue, myself."

He stares at it for a moment--all their little tick marks, all those moments and memories--and then grits his teeth. "Fuck the scoreboard, Brienne. I don't want to play anymore," he says, then brushes past her and slams the front door on his way out.

* * * * * * *

After he leaves, Brienne cries for a while, then whales on the punching dummy in the corner of her room for a while, then cries _while_ whaling on the punching dummy, until her eyes hurt and her knuckles hurt and she feels weak and drained and stupid. Sparring with Jaime is one of her favorite things in the world; fighting with him makes her feel like she's missing a limb. She answers Sansa's and Margaery's concerned texts with vague but comforting assurances, watches the angle of the lowering sun creep across the floor until it disappears completely.

 _Are you safe?_ she texts Jaime, when it's been dark for a couple of hours and he still hasn't come back.

 _Safe_ , is all he answers, and she sighs and drops her phone on the bed. 

She wakes up, fully clothed on top of the covers, somewhere in the fuzzy hours of the night. She taps her fitness tracker; it blinks 2:07 am. She drains the glass of water she'd left sitting on her bedside table and pads quietly to Jaime's room.

His door is open, which is something they've both taken to doing the majority of the time lately. Now, though, she's afraid that means he's not home yet, because he hadn't exactly seemed to be in an open-door sort of mood earlier. Her heart clenches when her eyes adjust enough to the darkness that she can make out the shape of him under the comforter, curled up on his side instead of his usual starfish sprawl. 

Heart thundering, she sheds her clothes on the way to the bed and slips underneath the covers. The movement wakes him up, and she watches his surprised, welcoming smile fade slowly as he goes from sleepy recognition to wary wakefulness. It sends a small, hot sliver directly through the center of her chest, like acupuncture that causes pain instead of relieving it.

She reaches out to smooth a tuft of hair behind his ear. "I didn't tell anyone because I didn't know what to tell them," she says quietly; the realization has been running through her mind half the night, and it's easier to tell him in the dark. "We never talked about it, Jaime. And it seemed like it couldn't be what I wanted it to be, because… well, because I'm me, for one thing, but also because being with you felt too easy, and almost nothing that means anything to me has been easy. And you mean a lot."

His mouth twists, rueful. "For the record, I like the _hell_ out of you being you, Tarth. I just didn't want to talk about it because talking about it might've made it real, and just about every relationship--of any kind--I've ever had has had an expiration date. I couldn't face that with you. So I thought it was better to just… not look directly at it."

It's so ridiculous that she has to laugh a little. "So did we just have a huge fight even though we were both basically on the same side?"

He's smiling when he covers her hand with his and turns his head to kiss her palm. "Sounds kinda like we did, yeah. That's a new one, I think."

At the touch of his mouth, all the tension that she's been holding seems to flood right out of her, leaving her buoyant and boneless. "Fuck. We should both probably go to therapy."

He snorts. "We really probably should." With a sigh, he runs his hand from her wrist down to her elbow. "Can we do that tomorrow, though? Because right now, I'm pretty tired."

"How tired?" she asks, biting her lip on her smile, moving closer to him.

He laughs, a ghost of sound. "Not _that_ tired," and he presses his body to hers.

For a while, all they do is trade lazy, open-mouthed kisses; he's sleep-warm and pliant and hard in all the right places, and in fact getting harder all the time against her thigh. When he pulls away long enough to say, "I bet--" she shakes her head, cutting off his words with her mouth.

"Shut up," she murmurs, just in case he hadn't gotten the message clearly enough, and the rumble of his answering chuckle vibrates against her chest.

Without a specific goal to dedicate herself to, Brienne feels a little bit like she always does when she goes back to Tarth and takes a day or two to just wander through the forests and over the cliffs, following whatever path calls to her. She's not sure she's ever noticed before how good his right hipbone tastes under her tongue, or the perfect pitch of his indrawn breath when she closes her teeth around his nipple, or the way his fingers seem to fit perfectly in between the bumps of her vertebrae. So many discoveries to be made, with the world of him wide open to her.

She _has_ noticed that, uncharted territory or no, she still _really_ wants his cock, so after she's mapped his body thoroughly enough that she's dizzy with it, she stretches out so that she can reach down under the bed to where he'd thrown his strip of condoms after their last round. He takes the opportunity to run the tip of his tongue along her stomach, just above the line of her pubic hair. It's a tease of everything else he can do in that vicinity, and she laughs.

"Don't make promises you're not going to keep," she warns.

"Are you kidding me?" he says. "I just had to go almost twenty-four whole hours without tasting you, _and_ you got a new skirt during that time. I'm not letting you out of this bed until we're forced to find sustenance or my tongue falls off, whichever comes first."

She laughs again, louder this time. "I can work with that. But I want you to fuck me first, so come up here." She wants to see his face, to know he's with her. 

He prowls up her body, she rolls the condom down his length, and then he's pressing inside of her; she's impatient like it's been weeks and not hours, and she flips them over so that she can be on top. The feel of him stretching her open from below makes her head tip back, her eyes flutter closed. He links his fingers with hers, giving her exactly the leverage she needs without her even having to ask for it. 

And again, it all feels too easy, so easy that it's difficult to trust. She trusts _him_ , though--it's Jaime, of course she trusts him--and she wants to honor his trust in her, too. So she rides him with slow rolls of her hips, eyes open and holding his, inner muscles clasping his cock tightly, trying to tell him with her body everything she'd failed at putting into words. 

He answers in kind, his hands roaming over her thighs, her breasts, the backs of her knees, like he's reassuring himself that she's still there. His face is somehow soft and fierce at the same time, all unguarded admiration and naked lust as he plants his feet on the bed and thrusts up hard to meet her. He reaches out to thumb her clit with just the right pressure, sending shocks of pleasure from her center out to all her extremities, and by the time they've built to a full electrical storm, he's moaning her name, starting to come apart underneath her. She keeps her own expression open, letting him see everything he's doing to her, and the last desperate movements of his hips and the vulnerable _o_ of his mouth are all she needs to pull her over the edge right after him. 

And despite how she does, in fact, want to sex him about seventeen ways from Sunday at some point soon, she's also exhausted, and she finds that what she wants most right this at this moment is to feel as much of his skin against hers as possible. Once he's taken care of the condom, she plasters herself against him, one leg notched between his, his head tucked into her neck.

His fingers are tracing patterns on her hip, and with his chest pressed against her, she can feel his breaths getting deeper, more regular. "Want to stay here?" he mumbles, kissing the wing of her collarbone. 

She squeezes her eyes shut. Since this whole new arrangement started, no matter how tired they've been, they've always split off to their own rooms to sleep. She feels like she was down two runs in the bottom of the ninth and then had somehow managed to tie things up, that light-headed relief of _there's still a chance, it's not over yet_.

She curls her hand around his. "Yeah. Yeah, I really do."

* * * * * * *

In the morning, she wakes up before he does. She's got about two dozen things she should get out of bed and get going on, but on the other hand, Jaime is in this bed, so. She reaches down to fish out her phone from where it's plugged in to the wall.

She'd retrieved it on her way back from going to the kitchen for water after he'd woken her up somewhere just before dawn with his fingers and then his tongue between her legs. Normally anything that interrupts her sleep at that time of night had better be prepared to defend itself, but he'd made an extremely compelling case for an exception. The memory sends a delighted shiver down her spine.

She's caught up on her email and is in the middle of debating with Arya over whether _stabbity_ is a valid Words With Friends entry when Jaime finally stirs, groans, and rolls over, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"Hey." His voice is rough with sleep and his hair is a mess and he's so groggy and handsome that even though she hasn't actually gotten up yet, she still feels like she needs to lie down.

"Hi." She flips him a breath mint from the small package she'd found in his nightstand. She's already had two, because it's almost eleven and she's getting hungry.

He raises his eyebrows and slips it in his mouth, showing a distracting flash of tongue. "Thanks."

"Pretty slick morning-after operation you've got here, Lannister." She's already imagining the fun they can have with the bite of that artificial mint flavor.

"Well." He stretches an arm above his head and gives her a lazy smile. "All part of the full-service experience."

Then a crease appears in the middle of his forehead as he seems to get stuck in the middle of the once-over he's giving her, and he reaches out to trace a finger along the bumps of her knuckles. She winces; they're still red and sore from her bouts with the punching dummy.

"Yeah. I may have gone a few rounds with Ramsay yesterday." She'd named him in college for Sansa's asshole ex-boyfriend; even years later, she still enjoys punching him so much that she can't bring herself to call him anything different.

Jaime gently tugs at her hand until she switches her phone to the other one, then he kisses each knuckle in succession. "But I bet I should see the other guy, huh?"

She snickers. "The worst part is, that fucker always looks the same."

"But in his _soul_ , Tarth." His expression is elaborately earnest, only his eyes laughing. "You wounded him in his soul, I'm sure."

She rolls her eyes and rakes her hand through his hair. "You're such a weirdo." Her phone buzzes in her hand--Arya's counter-argument, probably--and it reminds her of something.

"Here," she says, scooting closer to him, "I have something to show you." She starts poking at her phone. 

"Ooh, hey, are we going to start sexting now? Because if we are--and let me be clear, we _absolutely_ should--we're going to need a new data plan." He scrunches up the pillow under his head so he can get a better look.

She snorts. "Good point, but no, that wasn't what I wanted to show you. Here." She's pulled up her group chat with Margaery and Sansa, and angles the phone toward him so that he can read her latest message:

_So Jaime and I have been sleeping together for a little while now. We started it as purely a sex thing, but it turns out that I really want to date him, and I'm hoping he's on the same page._

It takes him a few seconds--his dyslexia is always worse when he's tired--but she can see the instant that it all resolves for him, the slow smile that starts to bloom across his face. "And what did Margaery and Sansa think of that?" he asks.

Before showing him the screen, she'd carefully positioned it so that he could see neither Sansa's answering string of heart emoji, nor Margaery's equally extensive parade of eggplant and splash emoji. "They're very happy for us." He's going to get the full brunt of their actual response eventually, of course, but she might as well delay that moment as long as possible.

"So," she says, her pulse pounding even though she knows the answer. Right? She _knows_. "Are you?"

"Am I what?" He's just beaming at her, like she's an open shot to the goal, like she's the sun and the moon and most of the galaxy for good measure.

She nudges his thigh with her knee. "On the same page, Jaime."

"Oh," he says, "right," and rolls over to give her a minty, yet still filthy, kiss that leaves her breathless, horny, and as sure as she's ever been of anything. "Good enough?" he asks, smirking.

She nods, half-expecting to see little cartoon birds circling above her. "Yeah, I think that pretty much covers it."

He shakes his head and leans in to kiss her again. "Oh, man. _Man._ I am going to boyfriend the shit out of you," he informs her when he's done, grinning so widely now that it's a little hard to look at it without protective eyewear, all her poor ocular nerves just naked to the force of his joy. "Flowers and candlelight dinners are for amateurs. You are not _ready_ for the level of boyfriend game that I'm going to bring to this, Tarth."

And given that she's fully determined to do some pretty world-class girlfriending, herself, the laugh feels like it bubbles up right from the deepest part of her chest. She raises an eyebrow at him. "Wanna bet?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to sameboots for some very key suggestions, for wrangling my run-on sentences, for enabling me via enthusiasm, and for just generally being a delightful person to share creative space with. ❤️❤️❤️ And thanks to everyone who was excited and supportive about this when I posted bits on tumblr, and thanks, of course, to all of you for reading! This is a fandom overflowing with wonderful stuff and I truly appreciate you taking the time for mine. ❤️
> 
> ETA 5/2/2020: I apparently wasn't QUITE done with this 'verse yet, so. A little follow-up added, where Brienne encourages Jaime to make good on some big talk. 😁


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comments on the previous chapters of this fic, nubbins_for_all suggested I write a follow-up to make Jaime make good on one of the fantasy scenarios he mentions. I thought that sounded extremely fun to write, and now, even though it took me a while to get to it, here is that thing! Thank you again to the amazing Sameboots for a heroic and very helpful beta (including pointing out a tragically missed opportunity for a sex joke, which is a crucial ability in a beta) despite adversity. ❤️❤️❤️ Any remaining mistakes or issues here are definitely my own fault.

"Jaime." Brienne leans over to kiss his shoulder. "Jaime, wake up." She's let him sleep as long as she can, but it's ten in the morning and she has _plans_.

"Mmph." He wraps an arm around her and hauls her toward him without opening his eyes. "Sleeping."

"Hence me telling you to wake up," she points out. She snakes a hand down under the covers and gives him a few lingering strokes. _That_ gets his attention; his eyes drift to half-mast right along with his cock. He shifts his hips lazily into the pressure.

"Don't make promises if you're not gonna keep them, Tarth," he says, rich with affectionate warning. She likes to wake him up sometimes just for how he sounds in the morning, all gravel and midsummer warmth.

"This one's a quiz," she says, giving him one last caress before biting gently at his chest. "Bet you don't know what day it is."

He squints at her, and she can see his brain struggling to turn over like a car on a cold day. "Saturday," he says after a few seconds, sleepily triumphant. "I win." And then drags her hand back to his cock.

She laughs and rolls over so that she can grab hold of the gift bag she'd stashed under the bed in the middle of the night. "Sorry, not the answer we were going for. Happy anniversary, though," she says, plunking the bag on the bed between them.

That wakes him up for real. His whole face goes soft with pleased surprise, and she can feel her own face heating. It's only been a month, and that seems like a silly thing to celebrate, but on the other hand, it was years before that. She figures they've got some catching up to do.

Jaime props himself up on one elbow to peek inside the bag. "You didn't have to do this."

"And yet. I'm just that amazing." She's grinning so wide that her face hurts. She's been _waiting_ for this.

The first thing he pulls out of the bag is a six-pack of Blackfish Obsidian Ale, which happens to be the beer they'd been drinking the night they'd made that first, fateful bet a couple of months ago. He laughs. "Ooh, the taste of you finally finding a way to get me into bed with you. Thank you."

She pats him on the head. "Just keep telling yourself that. But there's more in there." There's a piece of paper tucked against the side of the bag. Impatient, she pulls it out and presents it to him. It's the cocktail menu from his bar, newly-updated to include The Golden Lion: a tequila drink featuring a homemade lemongrass-ginger infusion that Jaime's been playing around with over the past few weeks. The recipe is his, though the name had been Brienne's inspiration.

He looks up at her, incredulous. "They actually put it on the menu?"

"Yup," she says, bursting with pride. "I brought it to Bronn, but it didn't take much convincing--he knows that's gonna be all anyone wants to drink the rest of the summer."

"That's--thank you," he says, looking flustered and tousled, and she leans in to plant a smacking kiss on his mouth. He shakes his head. "I can't believe you did all this and I didn't even guess right about what today was."

"It's fine," she laughs. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I could definitely hold this over your head until the end of time, but. As long as you concede that I'm the uncontested winner at girlfriending, I'm willing to let it go and just enjoy the day."

"Thank you," he says again, and he's going for another kiss when he suddenly stops himself. "Wait. Can you grab me a mint?"

"Good call," she says--she could use one, too--and stretches across him so she can yank the drawer open on the table on his side of the bed. And inside, nestled on top of his usual rolls of mints and more than a few condoms, is a little fan-shaped spread of tickets, loosely bound at the bottom with string like a bouquet.

She draws them out slowly; they're for one of the Tarth Pirates' home series next month, the last before the end of the season.

"I thought we'd go visit your dad," Jaime says, hands linked behind his head as he reclines on the pillow, _unbelievably_ pleased with himself. "Have a weekend away before you start up school again."

"Gods, you're such a dick," she breathes. Jaime cackles up at the ceiling.

"I mean. What kind of bush league boyfriend do you think you're dealing with, here? Like I'd forget our one-month anniversary."

She narrows her eyes at him. "I made dinner reservations."

"So did I," he fires back. "That Pentoshi place you like."

"Ha!" The Pentoshi place _does_ sound tempting, but. "Mine's nicer. And I got a dress."

Interest flares in his eyes. "Oh, really?" Since their little escapade at his bar the night that she'd passed her Ethics final, her wearing a skirt has mostly served as shorthand for challenging him to try to get under it. He bites the edge of his bottom lip. "Okay, you win that one," he admits, and she chalks up an imaginary point in the air between them. "What time are the reservations?"

"Seven."

"Sounds good. Now." Jaime puts her tickets in his gift bag and sets the whole thing carefully on the floor next to the bed. Then he levers himself up and over with leonine grace until he ends up straddling her, knees on either side of her hips. "Let's see if we can work on a new definition of bush league," he says, grinning, and her groan is half agony and half anticipation as he starts kissing his way down her body.

They don't make it out of bed until almost noon, and then they don't make it out of the shower until almost one. So by the time they've eaten lunch and kicked the ball around for a while at the park down the street, there's really only time to shower again and get ready for the evening. 

Hair still damp, Brienne slips on her new purchase and gives herself a careful inspection in front of her mirror in her room. The dress is midnight blue, with a choker collar that fastens around her neck; from there, silky fabric angles down under her arms, leaving her shoulders and most of her back exposed and offering a tantalizing glimpse of sideboob if she holds her arms just right. The skirt hangs in soft waves to just below her knees, and the whole thing goes perfectly with her favorite gold metallic wedges--the only semi-high heels she can walk in without feeling like a bear on stilts.

She'll never have the patience or the artistic eye to create the elaborate, _I spent two hours on my makeup to seem like I just rose out of the morning dew_ kinds of looks that Margaery specializes in, but for special occasions, she'll make time for the basics, at least: she swipes on blush and mascara and glossy lip color until she feels like a slightly sparklier version of herself. Her hair is even somewhat cooperating today, thanks to whatever magical product Sansa had brought over a while back that coaxes Brienne's usual nest of straw into tousled waves. 

_You crushed it, Tarth_ , she thinks cheerfully to herself as she comes out into the living room, and then she sees Jaime--scrambling up off the couch to his feet as soon as he catches sight of her--and all of a sudden she can't think at all.

He looks like he just walked off a classic movie set, all effortless glamor in a navy suit with a wide, peacock blue grid pattern that flirts playfully with plaid. His shirt is crisp and white, and his tie has some small, complicated assembly of shapes on it that she can't be bothered to figure out because _fuck_ , sometimes she's very powerfully reminded that her boyfriend is actually the most rage-inducingly handsome man in the world.

He takes a few steps toward her, whistling low. "Wow. You look… wow." He holds up one finger and makes a spinning motion, and she gets her motor skills together enough to turn slowly on one heel. "Wow," he says again, catching her around the waist while she's got her back to him, dropping warm kisses along the line of her shoulder. "I'm supposed to just… deal with this all night? And survive?"

"Ha," she scoffs. She covers his hands with hers as he links them in front of her. "You're one to talk. That suit is off-sides, if you'll let me borrow the term."

He makes an indistinct noise. "Tarth, I'm already turned on, you don't have to add soccer talk to it," he tells her, thrusting gently against her ass to illustrate his point. "And speaking of turn-ons… I do have another gift for you, actually."

"Is this gift in your pants?" she asks wryly. Not that that's a dealbreaker; if cheesy lines were dealbreakers between her and Jaime, she'd never get laid.

He laughs and kisses her cheek before stepping away from her. "Damn, I should've thought of that. But no, this one is actually for _your_ pants." He picks up a small bundle of tissue paper from the couch and offers it to her.

She raises an eyebrow at him. When she opens the tissue paper, she finds what looks like a small silicone barbell, with rounded ends and a loop of string on one side. She lets her eyes flicker up to meet his.

"Have you tried these before?" he asks, still heated but a little shy, too.

She shakes her head. "No, but I'm familiar with the concept. There are weights inside, right?" Sure enough, when she tips it back and forth in her hand, she can feel things knocking against the sides of the balls. She tries to imagine that same sensation inside her cunt, and it's… intriguing.

"Yeah," Jaime answers. "It's supposed to feel good, and I thought it might be fun to try it out. Only if you want to, though--if it's not your thing, just say so and I'll be very happy to let you sexually devastate me without it."

That gets a snicker out of her. "No, I--I think it sounds fun, too. Worth a shot, anyway." She'd hardly been a virgin when she and Jaime had started sleeping together, but she's discovering that the thing about being with someone she actually trusts--someone who'll listen to what she does and doesn't want and won't judge her for either of those things--is that her list of sexual experiences is multiplying rapidly. Fooling around with him gives her the same feeling of sweet, easy power that she gets from the arc of an unencumbered bat in her hands after she's been taking weighted practice swings, and he's starting to crave it as much as she craves nearly everything else about Jaime. 

Jaime, meanwhile, has perked up so much he might as well be salivating. "Okay," he says, pupils dilating already. "In that case: I bet you won't keep that inside you all through dinner. Only if you like it, though," he adds firmly, which is absolutely not how bets are supposed to work but absolutely the perfect thing to say, and she kisses him before heading to the bathroom to try it on.

It's a matter of some experimentation and even more lube to get it inside her, but once it's there, the sensation of the balls themselves isn't unpleasant, though it isn't mind-blowing either. It's more of a gentle pressure, a reminder that she's got a cunt and maybe she should be using it. As she washes her hands, she does a little shimmy to see how the weights feel, shifting like clappers inside of a bell. They're subtle, too, and she wishes they were a little less so, but she still likes the idea of having a sex toy underneath her fancy dress, and knowing that Jaime knows it's there, too.

"So?" Jaime calls through the door. "How does it feel?"

"Like I've got bells in my vagina," she calls back, and she can hear him laughing.

"In a good way?"

She opens the bathroom door. "I'm not--" she starts, taking a few steps toward him; the motion starts the weights moving again, and _this_ time, she feels it, a small flock of teasing vibrations deep in her center. Her eyelids close involuntarily. _"Oh."_

When she opens them again, Jaime's watching her. The heat of his gaze is enough to set off a whole different set of flutters inside her. "Yeah?" he asks, his grin gone sharp and predatory at the edges.

"Mmm." Now that she has a better idea of how the balls work, she shifts back and forth between her feet, deliberately loosening her muscles to let the barbell adjust itself. Her knees buckle a little at that riot of sensation again. "Ungh. Yeah."

 _"Fuck,"_ Jaime whispers, and steps in close to kiss her. It's dirty from the get-go, open-mouthed and hungry, and she's right there with him, hands slipping underneath his suit jacket to pull him closer.

"Y'know," she manages, half-distorted by his mouth and fully distracted by her new toy, "reservations can be changed." She starts tugging his shirt out of his pants.

He laughs against her tongue and reaches back to catch her hands. "No way." He pulls his mouth away from hers, but he keeps kissing her, leaving a humid trail along her jawline and across her shoulder. "I want to watch you like this all night. I want to sit with you in a very fine dining establishment and know that underneath that incredible dress, you're all wet and hot and aching, the way I ache for you all the damn time. I want you to be thinking about how it'll be me inside you later."

His voice seems to drag all the way down her bare spine; until she'd started fucking him, she'd never had any idea how glad she could be for his incessant talking. "I hope you know you're convincing me of the exact opposite of what you're trying to," she says, though she wants it, too, that hours-long tease of knowing exactly what they're doing to each other. She just wants to see how far she can push him first. She frees one of her hands from his and strokes the hard ridge of his cock through the front of his pants. His mouth goes momentarily slack against her skin and he curls toward her a little with a gasp.

Then he catches his breath and asks, "Don't think you can hack it, huh, Tarth?" and she scowls at him.

"Asshole." 

She's not sure what it says about her that she even finds his smug chuckle endearing. She grips his chin between her thumb and forefinger and tilts his head up for one last, rough kiss, then shoves him away. "Okay. We're gonna be late."

He's tousled and smirking, his eyes still ever-so-slightly glazed over. "Okay." He tucks his shirt back in and straightens his suit jacket, his expression going rueful when he sees the way the front of his pants are tented. "Huh. Didn't think that one through." 

She can't help snickering. "Serves you right." When she crosses the room to grab her purse off the couch, there go the weights inside her again, and _fuck_ , it's going to be a deliciously long, torturous night at this rate. She clamps her mouth shut over a whimper and makes her way back to him on only somewhat unsteady legs.

He's still smiling at her and there's definitely a self-satisfied curl to it to show that she's not fooling him in the slightest, but when she gets within arm's length of him, he reaches out to pick up her hand and bring it to his lips. "Hey," he says. "Have I mentioned how stunning you look?"

She's had weeks, now, to get used to this, to the easy way he tosses off those kinds of compliments no matter whether she's dressed up or all sweaty from practice or half-asleep next to him in bed first thing in the morning. Weeks and weeks, and it still sneaks under her guard every time. Speechless for a second, she kisses him, as slow and soft and sweet as she'd never dared to hope she could. 

"Right back at you, Lannister," she tells him when she pulls back. His eyelids flutter open slowly like a maiden's in a fairy tale. She swipes her thumb across his mouth to clear away the lip gloss she's left. "Think you can make it out to the car without embarrassing yourself?" she asks, though she's smiling too fondly to get any edge behind it.

He winks. "Bet you that I can if you can," he tells her, and offers her his arm.

* * * * * * *

Jaime is picky about restaurants, though not in the way most people expect. He has undeniably expensive taste and an eye for quality, but he hates pretension, so Brienne has carefully calibrated her choice for the sweet spot between "using lots of salt and sauces to cover up subpar ingredients" and "three pea-sized fish eggs served in the middle of a fourteen-inch plate." Of course, between the vibration of the car ride and the two-block walk from their parking space, she's almost too distracted by the muted fireworks show that's been going on in her cunt to take in Jaime's reaction. But when she sees him smiling as he takes in the tasteful chandeliers and the glittering collection of bottles behind the bar, she manages to get it together enough to smile back.

"Good pick," he says approvingly, and then his gaze sharpens and goes wicked with delight when he gets a good look at her face. He squeezes her hand where it's wrapped around his. "How you doing, there, champ? Anything you need a hand with?"

"Don't think I won't flip you off in the middle of a _very fine dining establishment_ ," she says, echoing his dry tone from earlier, and he laughs as the host approaches to seat them. 

She's requested one of the high-backed booths that line the far wall, each one curved so that it's nearly a closed circle, creating some approximation of privacy. 

"Thanks, man, this looks incredible," Jaime tells the host sincerely when he's got their menus placed in front of them, and the man smiles and wishes them a good evening before leaving them to their own devices. 

Brienne props her chin on her hand and grins at Jaime. 

"What?" he asks. He looks down, pats his tie, pulls his jacket aside to check on his shirt. "Did I drop something? Is my hair doing that thing again?"

She shakes her head. "It's just…" She'd gone to stuffy Lannister parties with him a few times in college, after he'd begged her and bribed her with the promise of shagging fly balls for her for a week. He'd been nearly as good-looking then--though he's grown into his face more over the past few years--and he'd had a whole collection of suits just as devastating as the one he's wearing tonight. He'd always been polite to the waitstaff then, too, but he'd never gone out of his way, never took the time to compliment anyone on the endless parade of elaborate finger foods, never gave the bartenders more than a quick, careless smile as he tossed a respectable number of bills in the tip jar. 

She slides along the booth until she's next to him, and presses a glossy kiss to his cheek. "You're a good guy, Jaime Lannister, and I'm proud of you," she tells him, and though he rarely blushes when she whispers the filthiest things she can think of into his ear, his cheeks go pinker now, warming under her lips. She shifts to keep her balance, and something about the angle or the impact sends small shockwaves from her center throughout her pelvis and makes her squeak before she can hold it in. Jaime laughs a little on an exhale--saved by the vagina bells--and she bites at his jawline. "You're also an evil bastard," she adds, and his laugh is fuller this time, loose and happy, his hand sliding around her back to rest at her hip.

Despite the candlelight, the hammered copper accents on their martini glasses, and the artful way Brienne's asparagus are curved around her perfectly-cooked swordfish, many of the fundamentals of their dinner are the same as a hundred others they've had over the years. They complain about their respective sports teams--Brienne because the Pirates have just been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, Jaime because Casterly just lost a key match against the rival Winterfell Ice--and Jaime fills her in on how he recently found Addam and Dacey making out in the hallway by the bathrooms at the bar; Brienne picks Jaime's brain about the marketing strategy presentation she's got coming up, and somehow that ends up devolving into a heated argument over the best action movie of the decade. 

On the flip side, there are some extremely key differences that Brienne is still getting used to: for one thing, Jaime seizes any opportunity to mention to anyone who comes near their table that it's their anniversary, like he'd be holding up a banner above their heads if he thought he could get away with it. He also touches her _constantly_. And while he'd been confusingly cuddling-inclined even before they'd started sleeping together, this is a whole other level, the way he tucks her hair behind her ear or rests his hand on her shoulder as he's laughing or touches her knee to help emphasize a point, all without even seeming to realize he's doing it. He does it all the time at home, too, but having him do it in front of everyone, in this beautiful restaurant where they're very obviously on a date, because they're dating, and she doesn't have to guard every movement of her own or smother her loud laughter or bury any inappropriate thoughts, makes her chest ache and her stomach flutter.

It's also a good thing she's not having to bury her inappropriate thoughts, because she's having very, _very_ many of them. Now that she's sitting down, the weights are mostly quiet, but she can still feel the faint pressure of the toy in her cunt, and every time she does, she can hear the rasp of Jaime's voice, _I want you thinking about how it's going to be me inside you later_. She catches him watching her with a knowing gleam in his eyes, and she pays him back as best she can: leaning across the booth to grab her purse so he can see her back muscles flex, moaning just a little too much at how good the food is, letting her fork drag out of her mouth just a little too slowly. She's not one for shoving her tongue down someone's throat in public, but this--trying to one-up him in dirty secrets, a hidden, harmless rebellion against all the rules she follows so scrupulously in the rest of her life--is definitely a game she's willing to put the work in to master.

When the server has cleared away their plates and dropped off the dessert menu, Jaime takes her hand and turns it palm-up so that he can set his lips against the inside of her wrist.

"How was your dinner?" he asks, as if the moaning had somehow left things ambiguous.

"Amazing," she answers. "Yours?"

"Phenomenal," he murmurs, the look in his eyes making it clear that he's not talking about the food. Heat rushes across her already-overworked nerve endings. He lets his mouth open slightly and this time there's a little bit more tongue in the kiss as he sucks gently on the sensitive skin. 

"Do you want dessert?" she asks, half-hoping he'll say no and they can just go home and fuck already.

"Oh, definitely," he answers, and she bites back a frustrated groan. He grins. "Tell you what. Why don't you tell me what you want, and I'll order."

"Why am I not ordering for myself?" she asks suspiciously. _I'll make decisions for the little lady_ isn't Jaime's style, thank all the gods.

"I left my sunglasses in the car," he tells her, a half-assed attempt at innocence if she's ever seen one. Really, it's quarter-assed at best. "I was hoping you'd go get them for me. Please?"

 _Fuck._ That means two blocks back to the car, and then two blocks back here, with those little, taunting butterflies in her cunt the whole time. _Asshole_ , she thinks, even as a delighted shiver runs down her spine. "Jaime, it's dark," she has to point out, because she can't just give in, though she's already formulating a twist on his request.

"I just feel… naked without them," he says, teasing emphasis on the word, and she rolls her eyes.

"Fine," she sighs. Then she nudges him a little further into the protective curve of the booth and leans in to give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. Under the table, meanwhile, hidden by the tablecloth, her hand is busy giving him an extended grope that has him stiffening immediately and his hips jerking up against her. When he gasps and turns his head to catch her mouth, she plants a hand in the center of his chest and slides away from him, out of the booth. "Be right back. I'll have the chocolate lava cake," she tells him cheerfully, while his shoulders heave and he sinks his teeth into his bottom lip. He looks at her with promises written all over him.

The walk to and from the car is exactly as torturous as Jaime had intended, and that, combined with her own plans, is enough to have electricity humming all along her skin by the time she gets back to the restaurant. She detours briefly to the bathroom, then makes her way back to their booth.

"Here," she says sweetly, tucking Jaime's sunglasses onto the table in front of him with a little pat. He raises an eyebrow when he sees the gift bag she's got in her other hand. "Forgot one," she explains, as though the bag hadn't been empty up until about five minutes ago.

His eyebrow climbs higher. "Do I get to see it?"

"I--" she starts, just as the server comes back with their dessert. One chocolate lava cake, beautifully plated, with two forks and a swirl of whipped cream on top.

"On the house," the server tells them with an indulgent smile. "Happy anniversary."

Brienne smiles back and thanks her, absurdly touched. She's never gotten free anniversary cake before. When the server has bustled back to work, Brienne turns to Jaime.

"You didn't order anything for yourself?" Normally he's got a raging sweet tooth.

"What I want isn't on the menu," he answers, heat simmering in his grin, and that dovetails with her plans so perfectly that she holds the gift bag out to him.

"Here."

He all but snatches it out of her hand, and looks inside. Then up at her. Then back inside. "These look… familiar," he says.

She laughs a little, and the low timbre of it shocks even her. She's so _ready_ she can hardly sit still with it. 

Which is exactly why she's just presented him with her underwear, nestled in the bottom of that cheap gift bag. 

She slides around on the bench until she's close to him again. "The bet was that I'd wear your gift through dinner. But this is dessert, so." The little barbell is tucked away in her purse now, all clean and ready for next time; it had been almost impossible to resist sliding her fingers over her clit as she'd slipped it out in the bathroom, but she'd managed. Barely. 

His eyes are hot and dark, the color of deep forest moss. "Too much for you to take, huh?" Which would needle her not-so-inner competitor, except she knows without a doubt that she's got the winning hand, here.

"No," she answers steadily. "I just wanted something else instead."

"And what was that, Tarth?" His breathing is coming harsher.

"Well," she says, moving closer still, until she can prop her chin on his shoulder and murmur in his ear. She lets one hand drift to his thigh while she's at it, sliding upward until she can feel the muscles tremble and then clench underneath her fingers. Part of her barely recognizes herself; a much larger part of her feels like she's just shining a light into a new corner of who she's always been. She hopes he can feel the rapid thud of her heart where it's pressed against his upper arm. "I've got two options for you. Either I bet you that you won't meet me in one of the very classy single-occupant bathrooms in a few minutes, or I bet you can't make me come right here. Your choice." 

That last one is a fantasy he's mentioned to her more than once, one that had been very much in the back of her mind when she'd bought this dress and planned this evening. But she's not sure if it's something he actually wants to _do_ or if it's just something he gets off on thinking about, and honestly, either way is more than fine with her--she just wants _some_ part of him in her cunt, soon.

Up close, she can see his throat move as he swallows. Then he glances down into the bag again.

"These look awfully wet," he says. She's at the wrong angle to know if he can actually see that or not, but it doesn't matter; he's right anyway. "You must have really liked my gift."

She hums a laugh. "I definitely did. But I like you better. Are you gonna do something about that, or am I gonna have to do all the work myself, here?"

"Hey." He angles himself toward her. Trails his nearer hand over her knee, slips it up underneath her dress. It's agonizingly slow, but it's _something_ , finally, and her breath gusts out of her. "That wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me, would it? On a special occasion and everything?"

"I completely agree." She puts a little more space between them so that his arm isn't at a weird angle, then scoots forward a bit so that as much of her as possible is hidden by the tablecloth before she tilts her hips and lets her knees fall open. Her pulse is pounding so hard in her veins that she feels light-headed. The corner table means that there's no one in their sightline currently, the tablecloth is floor-length, and even if the server comes by, she'll probably just think they're holding hands, but… 

Jaime sucks in a breath as his fingers reach the apex of her legs. "Can I have that in writing?" he asks, fingertips teasing through the curls there.

"What?" She couldn't spell a single word right now if her life depended on it. She can hardly manage to speak one.

"The thing where you agreed with me."

 _"Jaime,"_ she growls.

His chuckle is more vibration than sound. "So, we know my little gift got you wet. Did it get you opened up, too?" He says it conversationally, like he's asking if there's any spaghetti left in the fridge. "Do you think you could take three fingers right away, or do you want to start with two?"

Oh, _fuck_. "Three," she says quickly. "Three is good, Jaime, just--" And then he does, all at once. Stretching her, filling her, and she has to drop her forehead to her clenched fist and clutch a handful of the tablecloth to keep from yelling.

"Fuck, Brienne," he says, ragged now. "Everyone in this place is so fucking jealous of me right now, and they don't even know why."

She abandons her grip on the tablecloth to clamp her hand around his forearm instead, feeling it flex under her fingers as he twists and thrusts. _"Jaime."_

"You feel so fucking good," he tells her. "I've been wanting to do this all night. Fuck, I've been wanting to do it for months-- _years_ , maybe. I don't remember _not_ wanting to do it."

Her eyes are squeezed shut, all her attention focused on him moving inside her, on the way his words seem to catch on all her goosebumps. She's spent all night with not quite enough and now it's too much, just exactly the right amount of too much, and between the sensation and the adrenaline, she's rushing toward the edge. She rocks her hips a little, pressing her clit against the heel of his hand, and Jaime groans quietly through gritted teeth.

"Fuck, okay, I can't--I need to--" And then he uses his clean hand to knock his napkin off the table, says "Whoops" in the least convincing tone she's ever heard, and slides down toward the floor until he disappears completely under the tablecloth.

This is, Brienne knows, an absolutely terrible idea, not least because she has no idea how often those floors get cleaned, and also just slightly because her boyfriend is now in the process of going down on her in the middle of a restaurant. On the other hand, he's making an incredibly persuasive counter-argument by rotating his fingers so that they can crook up against her g-spot, and he's sucking on her clit with truly impressive enthusiasm, and Brienne is so--

"Everything okay here?" asks the server, coming around the side of the booth with a small box and the little book for the check in her hand. 

Jaime freezes, shoulders going rigid with tension between Brienne's legs. She blinks, looks up, and tries desperately to command her few remaining brain cells. Jaime's fingers are still inside her. She shudders a little before she can stop herself.

"I--" she stammers, then manages, "yeah, I'm good, I was just feeling a little--" _pre-orgasmic_ \--"light-headed for a second, there. But I'm fine now, thanks."

"You haven't touched your dessert," the woman goes on. "I thought you might need a box to take it home."

"Oh, I'm just waiting for my boyfriend to get back before I start." Under the table, Jaime flicks his tongue quickly across her clit; she clamps her thighs around him and feels his breath rush out of him, cool against her wet cunt.

"Ahh, of course." She gets another smile for that, this one conspiratorial. "You two are adorable, I hope you don't mind my saying." 

Brienne feels another puff over her skin, this one probably laughter--Jaime is _never_ going to let that one drop--but she gives the server as genuine a smile as she can muster under the circumstances. "Thank you. Everything was amazing; we really appreciate it. And I promise we'll be out of your hair soon." _You're very nice, but please go_ , she begs silently. _Please please please…_

"Take your time, honey," the woman tells her, though Brienne knows too many people who work in food service to believe her. Polite lie dispensed, the server finally, mercifully leaves the bill and the box perched on the edge of the table and disappears to check on someone else.

As soon as she's out of sight, Brienne drops her head back down and hisses, _"Hurry,"_ while she slips her hand into Jaime's hair and tugs him forward against her. He gets back to work immediately, no more teasing now, and his fingers and mouth and tongue know her _way_ too fucking well at this point, and she's so close, so _close_ and then she's there, biting the side of her fist so hard it will probably bruise.

Jaime withdraws his fingers and licks her clean carefully, then dots little kisses on her inner thighs as they continue to shake around him. She cards her fingers through his hair before reaching for her purse and digging out the couple of neatly-folded paper towels she'd appropriated from the bathroom. Still incapable of making words happen, she dips the corners in her water glass and silently passes the damp towels under the table. She can feel Jaime moving around for a few seconds, and then he wriggles his way back up into the booth next to her, hair tousled and mouth slightly swollen and everything about him just _screaming_ satisfaction.

"You didn't tell me this place had such incredible desserts," he says, a little breathless, and Brienne collapses against his shoulder, laughing helplessly. She reaches for his hand and accidentally brushes against his cock instead; he jolts like she's shocked him and grabs her hand, hard, holding it away from him. Maybe not _all_ satisfaction, then.

"Sorry," he grits out, though he's smiling at her. "Gonna need a minute, here."

"Awww," she says--completely unrepentantly, given what he's just put her through. "Poor Jaime." She does feel a little sorry for him, though, and it occurs to her that there are multiple ways to solve this problem. She tucks her arm through his--his upper arm, far away from the danger zone--and nudges him in the ribs. "Hey. It's both of our anniversary, right?"

He tilts his head and narrows his eyes, obviously trying to anticipate her next move so he can counter it if necessary. It sends an extra curl of lust through her stomach. "That's always been my understanding of how anniversaries work, yes."

"So I should get a choice, too," she goes on.

"A choice about what?" he asks, though she can tell by the hopeful lift in his tone that he's got a pretty good idea of where she's going with this. 

That being the case, she doesn't even bother to pretend to answer his question. "Jaime Lannister," she says instead, low and dramatic. "On this auspicious day, will you do me the honor of fucking me in that incredibly nice bathroom? Wait, I mean, I bet you won't fu--"

 _"Gods,"_ he gasps out, and then kisses her so hard he nearly flattens her against the seat, his tongue delving deep into her mouth; she can taste herself on him, still. He pulls back after a few short, brain-melting seconds. "Whew, sorry, I was just… sorry."

And that's the thing about Jaime: he'll go down on her under the table with no remorse but he'll apologize for making out with her where people can see, because he knows she can be shy about that. It fills her heart to bursting. "I can make exceptions," she says, and gives him a single, firm kiss to punctuate it. Then she grabs his jacket from the far side of the booth and drops it in his lap. "C'mon, tripod. Let's get out of here."

They bundle the cake into the box and split the bill, as they'd ultimately agreed to do after a lengthy discussion and a multi-round arm-wrestling contest. The fact that Jaime, like her, has brought cash in case they needed to make a quick exit, somehow turns her on even more. And when he looks consideringly at their little pile of money--clearly assessing their past and future activities for the evening--and drops another two twenties down for good measure, she almost jumps him right then and there.

They go into separate bathrooms at first, but it can't be more than about forty-five seconds before Jaime knocks softly on her door. 

"We said two minutes," Brienne says, laughing as she lets him in. 

Jaime clicks the lock closed, mutters, "Fuck _that_ ," and kisses her like he's starving for it.

He's so desperate and intent that she doesn't have the heart to make him wait, just tears her mouth away from his as soon as she can stand to, and turns around to brace her hands on the thankfully sturdy-looking vanity. "Come on. I'm ready, and I sure as hell know you are."

Jaime hisses another curse and starts digging in his back pocket for his wallet while he's unbuttoning his pants with his other hand.

"Oh yeah," she says, watching him in the mirror. He's got his cock free now, flushed and hard and glistening at the tip. Always the perfect height for her, especially with her heels on, and her cunt clenches in anticipation. "I forgot to tell you that I have one more present."

"I--thank you?" he manages; she can see him struggling to shift gears, struggling to pretend he cares about anything right now besides getting inside her. "Can it--can I--"

She grins at him. "I got an IUD," she informs him. "Happy anniversary," and the look on his face is a thousand times better than she could possibly have hoped for as he gracelessly hikes the skirt of her dress out of the way, lines himself up and sinks deep with a too-loud groan.

Logically, Brienne knows that the biggest change in sensation is likely to be on Jaime's side, but still, he feels somehow hotter and silkier, pulling out and thrusting in again, as far as he can get. And then there's the awareness that she's never done this with anyone else, never done most of this with anyone else, really, and that all the things she does with Jaime--even the failed experiments--are good because Jaime is good, and they're good together. She loves that now there's absolutely nothing to stand between them.

Jaime seems pretty into it, too, setting his teeth to the back of her shoulder, sliding his hand into the side of her dress so he can palm her breasts as he pounds into her. "Fuck, Brienne," he's gasping, "fuck, you're so hot, this is so hot, want you so much, gods." She flexes her cunt around him and he jerks so hard that his arm flails out a little and she can hear something tear at her neckline. She can't even care, just gets a firmer grip on the vanity so she can shove back against him, drive him deeper, feel his muffled moans against her skin. "Brienne," he says, his voice cracking, all his beautiful muscles shaking. "Brienne, Brienne, I love you, I love--" and while she's stunned for a second by that, he tenses up and she can feel a warm rush at her core.

Still pulsing inside her, he pulls his hand out of her dress and slips it between her legs instead. "Sorry, do you think you can--" he says, and she whispers, 

"Yes, yes, yes." Her body sparks as he pushes into her a few final times, his fingers on her clit clumsy but dedicated, and it's enough, just perfectly enough, to tip her over the edge.

She knows they need to clean up and get out of here before they get caught, but she feels so good, and he feels so good against her, that she tells herself they can have just a few seconds more. What with him draped over her back like a warm, sleepy, toned blanket, she can feel the _exact_ moment that he realizes what he'd said a minute ago. 

"Uh," he says. "So." He kisses her shoulder, soothing the sting of his teeth, and pulls out of her, and… _huh_. That's a disadvantage to sex without a condom.

Brienne holds up her index finger. "Hold that thought." She dampens another paper towel--they're the soft, fancy kind, and she's pretty sure this is not the application the makers had in mind but she appreciates it--and he helps her get cleaned up a little bit. He tries to hide it, but she can tell by the slight curve of his mouth that he's not mad about the idea of having some part of him still inside her. She's not mad about it either, to be honest. 

When they've washed their hands and straightened their clothes, she turns to face him and runs her fingers through his messy hair. "Okay. Look. No one gets held to anything they say right before they come, everyone knows that. So don't freak out." She's as surprised as anyone to discover that despite all her years of insecurities, all her bad relationships, now that they're doing this for real, there's no part of her that doubts that Jaime loves her. She also knows that in his family, love usually comes with a razor blade hidden in it somewhere. So if he's not ready to say it yet, she can wait to hear the words, especially when his actions keep shouting as loudly as they do.

His jaw drops. "I'm not freaking out," he protests. She raises an eyebrow. "I'm not! It's just." He runs a hand through his own hair, now, destroying the progress she'd just made. "I didn't want to tell you like that."

"You mean when you were balls-deep inside me in a public bathroom?" she asks, her mouth twisting; it is kind of hilarious, as she thinks about it.

"I mean." His expression is sheepish but his smile starts to slide across his face again when she continues to be amused rather than pissed off. "It is a _nice_ bathroom at least. Those are some high-quality paper towels, there, I don't know if you noticed."

She laughs. "I definitely noticed. So…" She may not _need_ to hear it, but now that it's on the table, she kind of really _wants_ to. "You're saying you _do_ love me?"

He throws his arms out to his sides. "Well, no shit, Tarth, what the hell do you think we're doing, here?"

Her heart--historically not the most athletic part of her--does a full-on back handspring inside her chest. "Was _that_ how you wanted to tell me?" she wonders, tapping her forefinger against her chin, and he makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl as he hauls her in closer.

"Fuck you," he grumbles, "of _course_ I love you," and leans up and presses his mouth to hers.

It's a long kiss, and thorough; when they finally break apart, Brienne's eyes are burning a little and she feels like she could run straight up to the top of the Mountains of the Moon without breaking a sweat. "Fuck you, I love you, too, by the way," she tells him.

He wrinkles his nose; his eyes are so bright she can barely see anything else. "Now you're just drafting off me. How embarrassing for you."

She rolls her eyes. "At least I wasn't mid-orgasm when I said it."

"Well, that can be arranged." He leans in again, and she laughs and twists away.

"Come on. Someone's gonna be knocking on that door any second now." She turns back to the mirror to check herself for any _I just had sex in a bathroom_ chic she might have accidentally acquired.

Jaime's the first one to find something: from behind her, he runs a finger along an inch or two of burst seam at the collar of her dress where it's fastened around her neck, little threads curling off it like a celebration emoji. He makes an embarrassed face. "Sorry about that."

"Absolutely worth it. Besides, I'll fix it." When he raises an eyebrow, she can't argue. "Sansa will fix it," she amends. She angles her neck, trying to get an outside perspective on it. "It's not too noticeable, right?"

"I think you're good there. This one might be an issue, though." He traces a curved line just above her shoulder-blade.

She twists so she can see what he's talking about, and… oops. There are purple marks in the shape of his teeth, standing out like a beacon on her pale skin. "Can you not control yourself, Lannister?" she asks, but she loves it; _fuck_ , she loves it.

"Nope," he answers emphatically. "But here." He shrugs his jacket off and wraps it around her. "This'll work for now, I think."

They're still in the last vestiges of summer and there's absolutely no temperature-related reason to be wearing it. She slides her arms into it and breathes in the scent of his soap that drifts up from the collar. It's almost exactly her size.

Jaime grins, looking at her wearing it, and drags her in by the lapels. "Pretty good anniversary, Tarth."

They seriously, _seriously_ have to leave this bathroom. She grins back at him anyway. "I know. How're we going to top it for our one-year?"

It's a meatball, right down the middle of the plate, and he doesn't miss. "Bet we can," he whispers, and she's laughing as she pulls him toward the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants some visual aids for Jaime and Brienne's fashion vibe in this story, [here's what I had in mind](https://brynnmck.tumblr.com/post/616963916497551360/im-planning-to-post-fic-later-tonight-or-tomorrow). Honestly both of them have RUINED me.


End file.
